IBASHO presents a solo exhibition of the Japanese photographer Naoyuki Ogino.
IBASHO presents a solo exhibition of the Japanese photographer Naoyuki Ogino.
IBASHO will show works from Ogino’s black-and-white series 'Womb of the Myth' from 2010/2011. This series was photographed on the site of the movie studio at Uzumasa Kyoto, Japan, which is one of the last places where the practice of traditional Japanese movie craftsmen remains. The recurrent construction and destruction - birth and delivery - of movie sets in the womb of the studio over a period of 60 years, has become a kind of simulacrum; the atmosphere of the place is filled with the ancient Japanese past, gods and future.
Ogino’s most recent works created with photography’s oldest printing technique, the salt print, on thin Japanese washi paper, can be admired as well. The salt prints on show derive from different series, among others from Ogino’s series ‘Skin’ from 2015. With this series he has tried to visualise not only a feeling of presence of a female body, like a breath felt on their skin, but also a materiality through a rich texture in the print that touches the viewer directly and deeply. His other salt prints reveal the deep relationship Ogino has with the Japanese mystical traditions and religions, his images often airing an evanescent world.
Ogino grew up in Tokyo, where he was born in 1975, and in Mexico. He graduated with a degree in physics from Nagoya University, but wanted to pursue his dream of becoming a photographer while working for Japan’s largest advertisement agency. In 2006 he decided to focus full-time on his career as an independent photographer. In the same year he received the Grand Prix of the Japan Photographer’s Union. He participated in Pingyao International Photography Festival in China in 2007, as well as the Tashkentale Photo Festival in Uzbekistan in 2008 and Taiwan Photo in 2011. Since 1998 he has held several solo and exhibitions in Mexico, the U.S., Taiwan and other countries.
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NAOYUKI OGUNO
12 JANUARY - 12 FEBRUARY 2017
OPENING: THURSDAY 12 JANUARY 19:00 - 22:00
IBASHO
TOLSTRAAT 67,
2000 ANTWERPEN
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Ogino about his series Womb of Myth:
"I have been taking these photographs in the movie studio at Uzumasa Kyoto, Japan for many years. In this work I have been searching for the seismic zones where today’s myths are fashioned through the handy work and breathe of professionals. I wanted to turn away from the banks or the companies with computers, and toward someplace with the sense of sacredness, where craftsmanship still guides the imagination. I found this place. This is not anymore the center of a vital industry; it is almost the last place where the practice of traditional Japanese movie craftsmen remains. This last citadel is now sinking. In 2011, three studios disappeared, and the longest running traditional Samurai drama with 43 years of history was closed. But still in this place, I sense a gravity rising from huge stacks of used sets and their atmosphere.
All of this has become a kind of simulacrum, accumulating during the 60 years of recurrent construction and destruction that has played in the service of imaginal screens. What remains of the screenings, of the respiration of others is this simulacrum, this heap; this pile of the past that is at once empty and thick. What rests here, is more than the dust of storytellers, more than craftsmanship; what rests here is our ancient past, our gods and our future."
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Ogino about his series Skin:
"Archaeologists state that the most ancient human art can be found in the paintings and handprints as found in caves. Recent research has indicated that this art was mainly made by women's hands. The ancient handprints are an index of the women who put them on the walls of the cave, just as a photograph of a person can be seen as a materialized trace of that person.
With my "Skin" series, I am trying to visualize not only a feeling of presence of a female body, like a breath felt on their skin, but also a materiality through a rich texture in the print that touches your eyes directly and deeply. It connects me with other human beings as if I were reaching out for them and experiencing them from a womb, experiencing the outside world from a place of in-betweens. In-between feeling and touching, naked and veiled, body and landscape, positive and negative, reality and illusion, past and future or life and death. Being in this sphere of in-betweens or 'world of the myth' makes me feel very connected with nature."
Without our skin we cannot connect of feel or identify ourselves. In this way the skin can be seen as a kind of primitive entrance to experience the other. And also the handprints -an index of the women- in the caves can be seen as a kind of primitive entrance to feel the other's existence and maybe that is why this primitive art is so powerful as it connects us with our ancestors.
The skins of this series are unique and personal but at the same time they are separated from the actual woman and turned into an anonymous entity like the ones in the world of the myth.
