I have issues with art exhibitions in stores, especially high-end ones on Madison Avenue. I really do not like the blurring of lines between art and luxury item - it really bothers me and I think it does a disservice to the artist and his or her career. Yeah, yeah - I know - I live in NYC - who am I kidding? Hello - Warhols at Christie's - that's the ultimate in luxury items, right there.
But again - I am a bit of a purist when it comes to art venue and I probably need to get over it.
However, I saw this photographer, Rinko Kawauchi, for the first time at AIPAD in March (I am not sure why I hadn't discovered her work before - she is very popular in Japan and has published a multitude of books of her photography, but I think this is her first solo show in the US - so that may be why) and I had heard that her new body of work was going to be shown at the Hermes Gallery, which is on the 4th floor of the store on Madison and 62nd street in late spring.
First about the space - I hate to say it, but its really nice. Natural light pours in like a waterfall through the enormous skylight just above the 4th floor. There is nothing there except for the gallery and actually hardly anyone was there and it was practically silent - a perfect setting to see this work.
Kawauchi captures the sort of magic that happens at a moment in the everyday. There is a focus on the chance beauty of things - whether it is a minute frog taking a short rest on a gargantuan hand, the over exposure of a rose, a dead bird or an eclipse. I had only seen her work in the small scale, but here the works are a bit larger (40x40), but do not lose the kind of reserve and simplicity seen in her earlier photographs. I love how light becomes ultimately as important as the subject in her pictures. At first glance, the images seem to be sort of haphazard - a focusing in on the small and then with the next image, a larger landscape of light breaking through trees or an imposing rocky crag. But after a while, you begin to see that they all relate to life, death and the eternal.
These works are uncomplicated and there is a silence that pervades her work - a welcome respite in our loud and crazy times and the antidote to the constant bombardment of images in our everyday life. Here we can take a moment and see our own mortality - that there is a life cycle and that the natural world will continue without us, but there is joy in that because we learn a lesson here. The small, precious moments in life that we miss - that Kawauchi has captured here for us to behold and in her past photographs (please look up her earlier work - its fantastic!!), we should slow down and take the time to see, understand and celebrate the beauty. At least, that's how I feel when I look at these and her body of work. As she exercises restraint in the way she approaches the image, I find my emotions in looking at them a bit overwhelming.
Please don't miss this show. (Sorry - there is no link to the exhibition)
(I have also just heard that there is a dual exhibition with her and another Japanese photographer downtown at Mountain Fold gallery of recent photographs from the devastation of the March 2011 earthquake in Japan. I haven't seen it yet but anxious to go.)
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