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Namiko KITAURA
Events
Written by In the document   
Published: January 26 2011

Series - Domestic Stills 'Stitched', 420 x 308 mm, lambda print, 2004
Courtesy of the artist and TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP
Copyright© 2004 Namiko Kitaura

Namiko Kitaura was born in 1977 in Tokyo, Japan. Since participating in FABRICA, an artist-in-residence program in Italy sponsored by Benetton, she has been working as a freelance photographer based between Japan, Italy, the UK and France. This is her first solo exhibition as a fine artist at a commercial gallery, showcasing a series of photographic still lifes that include photos of flowers (Domestic stills) that she took recently.

The flowers depicted in Kitaura’s photos have been manipulated in ways that leave the trace of her touch intact. She uses a wide variety of methods to process her subjects: threading petals together and letting them hang, frying flowers in hot oil, or soaking them in detergent and washing them until they become distorted and misshapen. Kitaura calls these processes “incidents”. She captures even the most minute wrinkles on the surface of these petals and the fragility of flowers torn apart by tension, portraying the various transformations that they undergo. Kitaura’s subjects have a certain sensuousness about them that causes a restless sense of disquiet to settle over the entire surface of her work.

Many people typically take photos of flowers that symbolize beauty, loveliness and sensuality. They print these photographs in order to create a permanent record of their beauty. The subjects found in Kitaura’s work, however, are not flowers per se. She trains her lens on the various “incidents” that have happened to these highly symbolic flowers. The exact meaning of these “incidents”, however, is something that is stirred up in various ways by the viewer’s imagination.

In a world of constant change where all manner of events come to pass and then fade away, this exhibition of Kitaura’s work is an intense evocation of the transience of things using flowers as a material.

* The text provided by TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP.


Period: February 26 - March 19, 2011
Venue: TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP | TOKYO
Artist Talk: February 26, 2011, 13:00 -
Opening reception: February 26, 2011, 15:00 - 17:00 at TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP | TOKYO

Last Updated on February 26 2011
 

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