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  ©Michiko Kon

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  ©Michiko Kon

PGI is pleased to present Recent Works 2018, the solo exhibition at the gallery for artist Michiko Kon.

Michiko Kon delves deep into her subconscious to bring back inspiration for her otherworldly still life images. Since the mid-1980s she has been transforming seemingly mundane objects like vegetables, sea life, flowers and insects into chimerical objet d’art which she then photographs and prints herself.

In recent years Kon has produced a number of pieces in Mexico, using local motifs and playing her own views on life and death off of the region’s unique amalgam of religion and occultism. Alongside the insects and taxidermied animals often found in her photographs, she has also begun utilizing silkworms, larvae and cocoons in an attempt to more accurately express transmigration and the circle of life.

Her imaginary beasts, draped in eyeballs and flowers or robed in garments of fish and cocoons, transcend the taxidermy and forgotten antiques they’re made from and take on an inexplicable sensuality, becoming so alive the lush handmade silver halide prints can barely contain them. Like the fantastical creatures of myth and folklore, these creations hail from Kon’s own allegories on life, death and devotion.

Kon’s sinisterly silent creations trigger primal emotions–lust, disgust and everything in between. To view them is to invite them into the deepest reaches of your own subconscious.

　　The blind silkworm, a dragonfly’s broken wing, a motionless cicada

　　The silkworm’s presence, their odor, the thread they spew, the unforgettable sound of falling snakes

　　The flightless silkmoth, the mouthless silkmoth

　　A gutted billy goat, the scent of narcissi, a moist petticoat, the conger eel’s soft flesh

　　Shirako soap, Bambi pine

　　Ahead lies only gloom

                                                                       　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　     –Michiko Kon

Michiko Kon

Born in Kamakura. She was the recipient of the 16th Kimura Ihei Award for the work “EAT” (P.G.I.) in 1991. Her recent solo exhibitions include “Naturaleza Muerta”, Fototeca Nacional Sinafo. INAH (Pachuca, Mexico 2017), “Michiko Kon”, Michel Soskine Gallery (Madrid 2017), “Michiko Kon”, Universidad Veracruzana (Xalapa, Mmexico 2016), “Recent Works”, PGI (Tokyo 2014). Her photographs are in the collections of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Vincent Van Gogh, among others.

Exhibitions at PGI