showcase #10 “Echoes of Alienation” curated by minoru shimizu

group exhibition

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showcase #10 “Echoes of Alienation”
curated by minoru shimizu

Narumi Hiramoto (PGI)
Yasuhide Yoshimura

2022.04.08(fri.)— 05.08(sun.)
open on fri., sat., and sun. 12:00-18:00
appointments are available on weekdays

From April 8, 2022, we will hold a group exhibition “showcase # 10” presenting in photography and video curated by Minoru Shimizu. As the title of the exhibition indicates, the showcase exhibition is a “showcase” for young contemporary artists in photography and video that has been held every year since 2012. This exhibition is a memorable one, celebrating the10th anniversary of “showcase”.

This year, Narumi Hiramoto and Yasuhide Yoshimura were selected with the theme “Echoes of Alienation”. Even though the photographs are taken from everyday scenes, such as newspaper clippings and daily life, the works echoes (reverberates) in an “uncomfortable” manner that seems to embody the chaos the COVID disaster.

We are hoping that this chaos will not become our new normal …

Press Release

→Click here to see previous “showcase” curated by minoru shimizu.

showcase #10 curated by minoru shimizu
Echoes of Alienation

The most basic commonplace preceding any artistic expressions, i.e. the “ordinariness” of everyday as degree zero of art, has been regarded as the quintessence of photography as well as its ultimate end. Since 2020, however, the Covid 19 disease has taught us that this basic commonplace is in reality a very fragile one, which has collapsed easily and undramatically. Locked up in the house, we have been forced to face our own everyday life. The environment that had held us unconsciously has turned into an uncomfortable straitjacket and our days of ordinariness are gone somewhere, whilst the persistent disease has not reached a status of new ordinariness. Now, the ordinary everyday life offers us nothing but a feeling of alienation because nothing has remained “as it is” any more.

To its 10th anniversary, the showcase is pleased to exhibit two artists who will correspond to our present situation.
Narumi Hiramoto (b.1984) won the grand prix of the 20th “1_WALL” award in 2019. Hiramoto is also known as Yusaku Yamazaki, who participated in 2015 the showcase#4 “construct”. How these two artistic personae coexist in a single person is something only Hiramoto=Yamazaki would know, however from their works we could say that the former makes pictures without photographing the world, while the latter photographs it in order to make pictures.
Starting from the recognition that our everyday world is made up with photographs, Hiramoto cuts out photographs from local newspapers, just as in Thomas Ruff’s “Zeitungsfoto”-series, in order to set the photographs free from their original contexts. He then manipulates them into oddly alienated images of everyday world, which are to be uploaded to SNS. Like On Kawara’s “date paintings”, this procedure has to be accomplished by the end of the day.
As Corona-infected persons are secluded from our view and as the radiant form of the Corona-virus is just an electron-microscopic image, the Covid 19 disease cannot be properly photographed and remains concealed. How, then, do Hiramoto’s alienating collages correspond to our present situation alienated in the Corona-restrictions?
Yasuhide Yoshimura (b.1993. https://yasuhideyoshimura.com/）won the excellent award in the Canon New Century of Photography Award 2020. For the showcase#10 the new face presents the awarded series “Horseshoe”. In an ordinary, pretty prefabricated house, the ordinary “I” and the ordinary “she” are performing their “ordinary days”, so ordinary that there are hardly any ups and downs but their dog’s and rabbit’s death. Though a horseshoe is a Western symbol of luck, Yoshimura’s photographs accumulate sediment of subtle alienation and uncanniness, instead of telling the moral of the bluebird that the luck is to be rediscovered in the ordinary daily life.
The artist makes his living as a social worker at a supporting facility for the intellectually disabled, where in fact diverse worlds of ordinariness collide each other. Days of diversity affirm the plurality and hence fragility of the very commonplace, both of which are matrices of his photographs.

April 1st, 2022. Minoru Shimizu

Minoru Shimizu: Art Critic. Regularly contributes essays and critics for photography books, art magazines and museum catalogues. Major English publications on art: “The Art of Equivalence” in Wolfgang Tillmans truth study center (Taschen, 2005), “Shinjuku, Index” in Daido Moriyama (Editorial RM, 2007), “Fiction and Restoration of Eternity” in Hiroshi Sugimoto: Nature of Light (Izu Photo Museum/Nobara, 2009), “Daido Moriyama’s Farewell Photography in Daido Moriyama (Tate Modern, 2012), “Guardian of the Void” in Palais Magazine No.19 (Palais de Tokyo, 2014).

Narumi Hiramoto

Renowned prefrontal synthesis researcher and professor emeritus at Olomouc University of Medicine Nikola Holá died on Monday in a hospital in Prague. She was 68.
Holá’s research on the gyration of silent synaptic binding receptors led her to the development of the “Holá signal,” a highly efficient method to induce βq decay in targeted synapses, for which she is widely recognized. Her work revolutionized the field of neurosurgery when, in 1989, she introduced Lammtarrization surgery. The non-invasive procedure, which allows physicians to manipulate the frontal cortex neural circuitry with the use of a signal transduction glove, brought about major improvements in an area of surgical practice in which craniotomy procedures were previously common.
She became the first woman to receive the prestigious Yarkovsky Award in December of last year. Concerns for her health began to circulate when she missed the ceremony on account of a severe headache.
Holá is survived by her younger sister, famed politician and first Czech female astronaut Noemi. Private services will be held for her family.

Narumi Hiramoto CV

Yasuhide Yoshimura