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Susumu Harada: window - scape ... -scape
Reviews
Written by Takeshi HIRATA   
Published: November 14 2008

"window -scape ... -scape/susumu harada" (2008), art & river bank, copy right(c) 2008 Susumu Harada and art & river bank

"window -scape ... -scape/susumu harada" (2008), art & river bank, copy right(c) 2008 Susumu Harada and art & river bank

"window -scape ... -scape/susumu harada" (2008), art & river bank, copy right(c) 2008 Susumu Harada and art & river bank

     When we turn on TV today, enormous images are broadcast. We daily receive images sent to a box-shaped video receiver called a television. In our present life, we cannot spend one single day without watching monitors; not just TVs, also PCs and mobile phones. "Images" on TVs and PCs that we unconsciously watch can also be called a form of scenery. "Scenery" does not mean only beautiful nature and disorganized cities. If we can call whatever we see "scenery", displays/images on TV, PCs, mobile phones and LCD monitors in the cities and trains are also "scenery". Perhaps we must be aware that we understand even low-definition cheap images as a form of "scenery".

     "window - scape" (2008) by Susumu Harada is a photo work. He "took pictures" of this other scenery, images on TV/computers. Images are so defocused that we cannot specify the place or people but only the light blinking. His photos capturing light might be "shooting" in the most fundamental meaning. When William Henry Fox Talbot, who invented photography, took the first photo, the image was vague. However, there was a real world there which the camera surely captured. Despite the vagueness there was “scenery” that he was trying to show us. He investigated photography in the hope of preserving the "light" forever. If we think that providing a record of light is at the root of the photograph, Harada's work can be regarded as the record of the "light". The "light" from the monitors is a closer and more exposed "light" for us than that of the Sun.

     Susumu Harada's solo exhibition for the first time in two years, held from Saturday October 11th 2008 to Saturday November 1st 2008 at the Art & River Bank gallery comprised an installation of a digital photo-frame. He showed us another "scenery". Images on the monitors seemed to be those on the screens of TVs and computers that are daily showered onto us, however, they were also another form of "scenery" that we feel we are really facing or experiencing, although in fact we are not.

     The word "television" consists of "tele" (far away) and "vision". Harada's images might be the closest as well as the farthest vision for us. Sometimes we know far more about incidents that have happened far away than those that have occurred in our own neighborhoods. Everything - stock information, war, conflict all over the world, food crises and environmental problems – these all really happen to me and you, but we never surely feel these as "experiences" nor directly undergo or touch them. Nevertheless, we easily react to images and information. Through the "light" from the monitors, a window-scape is sent to us.

     The title of this exhibition is "window - scape" plus "...- scape". Is this because of the repeat/nested structure in which an image clipped from a photo is displayed on the monitor again and again? We see defocused scenery in the distance like degraded, duplicated image copies. We see the scenery "in the distance", which is the real "scenery" for us.

* Images referred from the flyer for "window -scape ... -scape/susumu harada" by art & river bank, 2008.
(Translated by Chisato Kushida)


Related Exhibition

Susumu Harada: window - scape ... -scape
11/Oct/2008 - 01/Nov/2008
Venue: art & river bank

Last Updated on July 06 2010
 

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