hpgrp GALLERY NEW YORK is pleased to present Kiyoji Otsuji exhibition. This is the gallery’s first show with the artist and photographer.

The exhibition aims to research his life long theme, relationship between camera lens and objects, and his experimental philosophy through 30 pictures and 2 films made from 1949 to 1980. Otsuji was impressed by a magazine, PHOTO TIMES, which was published in 1924 and introduced Western avant-garde photographs by Moholy-Nagy László, Man Ray, Herbert Bayer and so on. His interest in avant-garde created his philosophy on photograph and made him a pioneer of avant-garde photo and Modernism after World War II in Japan. The show has a series, Itamashiki Buttai (Pitiful Objects, 1949) of work depicting metal and organic objects and others in his early career that express his attitude to the mystery in the existence of things and the presence of things

Also the show has 3 vintage prints about “APN” (Asahi Picture News) project in 1953 and 1954, which was collaboration with a sculptor, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and a photographer Shōzo Kitadai　and other artists. This project showed a new era of a commercial photo and magazine. Otsuji attached great importance to collaboration works with different fields, media or genres. He left a memo for his class at a school that “Now there is no reason to refuse expression over media (inter media). Otsuji is an important and unique photographer of postwar generation in Japan as well as a member of Jikken Kōbō ― Experimental Workshop and Graphic Shūdan.

His philosophy about photograph was succeeded by the later generations in Japan. He had classes at Kuwasawa Design School,Tokyo Zokei University and University of Tsukuba and had influence on Yutaka Takanashi, Shinzo Shimao, Shigeo Gocho.

About Kiyoji Otsuji
Born in Tokyo in 1923. Kiyoji Otsuji started his career as a photographer with avant-garde photographs in search of aesthetic of objects after World War Ⅱ. His photographic works show his experimental idea and spirit and create a new era through inter media collaborations. Also he was seeking for original theory about possibility of photography as a media and made a significant page in the history of Japanese photo.

*image (left)
Kiyoji Otsuji
Entangled Object, 1949
© Otsuji Seiko / Courtesy: Tokyo Publishing House