Blog Galerie Priska Pasquer

We just returned from the Art Basel 39 and three of the artists we exhibited at the fair are currently on show in US and Japanese museums:

August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century
The Getty Center, Los Angeles
May 6 – September 14, 2008
The exhibition shows a selection of 130 portraits from the the Getty’s remarkable collection of 1,200-plus works by August Sander.

People of the Twentieth Century, the collective portrait of German society made by German photographer August Sander, has fascinated viewers from its earliest presentation in a 1927 exhibition and the controversial publication of a selection of 60 images in the book Face of the Time published two years later. Despite Sander’s dedication over five decades to the idea and compilation of this portrait atlas of the German people, the project remained unfinished. Nonetheless, his photographs remain compelling, in part because he chose to categorize his subjects by profession or social class. The images are thus representations of types, as he intended them to be, rather than portraits of individuals.
[Quote: Getty Center]

The Los Angeles Times had a positive review of the August Sander exhibition.

Daido Moriyama “I. Retrospective 1965-2005″ & “II. Hawaii”
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
May 13 – June 29

MORIYAMA Daido started work as a freelance photographer in 1963, publishing his ‘Yokosuka’ series in the ‘Camera Mainichi’ monthly magazine in 1965. He continued to publish work in various photographic magazines, the high-contrast, grainy images he produced during the sixties and seventies being criticized as ‘coarse, camera-shaken and blurred’, but they were to cause a revolution in the Japanese photographic world. Forever questioning the meaning of photography, all his photographic series – his early, ‘Japan, A Photo Theater’ (1968), the controversial ‘Farewell Photography’ (1972), which examined photographic expression, ‘Light and Shadow’ (1982) which marked his comeback after a creative slump, and his latest, ‘Hawaii’ (2007) – all attracted great attention.

Capturing daily life in the form of ‘snapshots’ taken in the street, his powerful works stir up emotions such as desire, loneliness, unease, etc. in the viewer. The exhibition comprises of two sections, one tracing the career of this world-famous photographer and the other showing his current work.
[Quotes: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography]

The Japan Times had an interesting article about the exhibition which includes an interview with the artist:

“I’m not always a stray dog. Sometimes I’m a cat,” says Daido Moriyama. “Or an insect.”
[Quote: Japan Times]

Asako Narahashi in the group exhibition
Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan
International Center of Photography, New York
May 16 – September 7

Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan will present the exciting and highly individualistic work of a new generation of Japanese artists who have come of age following the Asian economic crash of 1990. For the last several years, China has been the focus of attention for contemporary Asian art, while the remarkable and distinctive younger generation of Japanese artists who are working today has been largely ignored. This ICP exhibition will be the first major U.S. presentation of contemporary photo-based artwork from Japan in over ten years. Heavy Light will present the work of thirteen artists and will fill most of the ICP gallery space. The exhibition will include both photographs and video, many of which are large and dramatic pieces.
[Quote: ICP]

[On Asako Narahashi:]
An archipelago-nation that consists of four main islands and roughly 3,000 smaller islands, Japan has one of the longest coastlines in the world, stretching over 18,486 miles. Located in an area of intense seismic activity, it also has an intimate familiarity with such natural disasters as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and landslides. In the series “half awake and half asleep in the water,” begun in 2000, Asako Narahashi photographs Japan’s coastal landscapes and architecture while standing precariously in the ocean just offshore. Caught in a mood of floating, dreamlike isolation, Narahashi’s images testify to her sense of mixed pleasure and panic as she is buffeted by the swelling waves. Nature, glimpsed from this vantage, is both a serene presence and a turbulent, unpredictable force.
[Quote: ICP]

NOTE: Our next exhibition will feature Asako Narahashi “half awake and half awake in the water”. The vernissage is on September 12 and the artist will be present.