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  ©Kikuji Kawada

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  ©Kikuji Kawada

PGI is pleased to present Shadow in the Shadow, the solo exhibition at the gallery for artist Kikuji Kawada.

Kikuji Kawada’s 60-year career as a photographer began with shooting gravure for ‘Shukan Shincho’ magazine in 1956. Since then, ambitious works like ‘Chizu (The Map) [1965],’ a metaphor-riddled recollection of Japan’s loss of the second World War, the apocalyptic documentary of bizarre weather conditions ‘Last Cosmology [1996]’ and the series of urban phenomena ‘Last Things [2016]’ have made him one of the most internationally acclaimed Japanese photographers of all time. 

For the last two years, Kikuji Kawada has uploaded three or so photographs a day to Instagram. He finds the way the images acquire ‘likes’ with virtually no other comments or interaction as sublime, if not a little spooky. While photos posted to social media like Instagram linger on forever in our timelines, Kawada makes a point of also printing each image.

This exhibition will feature around 50 of these photographs.

There’s another, warped world lurking within our own, reflecting in pools of water or suddenly appearing as ethereal big city shadows. Similarly, Kawada’s otherworldly photos are embedded into our image feeds in between photos of food, family, travel and the mundane, lurching out at us as we scroll. These photographs, so out of place in our timelines, take on another life when made into physical prints and show us a vision shockingly rooted in reality.

I have been paying attention to Instagram. It started as curiosity to see what this new form of communication might bring. Two years have passed since my first upload, and time has since seemingly vanished into the limitless platform, like an unfamiliar shadow silently sweeping past me.

The shadows of uncertainty cast by passing seasons and generations send chills down my spine. This whole time I’ve wondered if any of it has been real or all just a dream. I’m also constantly dumbfounded by the sheer number of synchronicities. I’ve become entangled in some sort of shadowy image abduction conspiracy. And yet each little heart mark symbolizing a stranger liking an image renews the spell and I willingly delve deeper into the puzzles of light.

Sun-kissed bare trees, having shed their leaves for the winter, transform into phantoms while summer window panes absorb the light and deep shadows, whispering “The images are your shadows.” The shadows of clouds and wind lack hue but change in dimension. Shadows cast by the undulation of old electrical wires create discord on the ground below. By night crowds mutate into shadows and begin to resemble Invaders reluctantly floating off into space.

The myriad of shadows lurking around me are like faceless harlequins, rapidly interpolating reality with mise-en-scène. Photos dance endlessly around the shadows yet fall short of true penetration. For the image abductor knows no bounds.

Kikuji Kawada

10.April 2019 Tokyo

Kikuji Kawada

Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan in 1933. Kawada co-founded the VIVO (1959-1961) photographic collective in 1959.

He was one of the fifteen artists selected for the “New Japanese Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974.

Selected Recent One-Person Exhibition; ZENO – The Last Cosmology (PGI, 1996), Car Maniac (PGI, 1998), Eureka (PGI, 2001), Kikuji Kawada: Theatrum Mundi (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photograph, Tokyo, 2003), The Map 1960-1965 (PGI, 2004), Kikuji Kawada: Eureka/ Multigraph (Shadai Gallery, Tokyo Polytechnic University, 2005), Invisible City (PGI 2006), ATLAS 1998-2006 (Epsite, Tokyo, 2006), Remote Past: Memoir 1951-1966 (PGI, 2008), World’s End (PGI, 2010), Nikko – A Parable (PGI, 2011), 2011-phenomena (PGI, 2013), The Last Cosmology (Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, 2014), The Last Cosmology (L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, NY, 2014), Last Things (PGI, 2016), Los Caprichos -Instagraphy- 2017 (PGI, 2018), and numerous group exhibitions.

Collections: Museum of Modern Art New York, Museum of Fine Art Houston, Museum of Fine Art Boston, Tate Modern, SF Museum of Modern Art, The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Tokyo Polytechnic University, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

Exhibitions at PGI