Yoshinori Marui

Apparition

Oct 15 - Dec 5, 2020
PGI

Yoshinori Marui

Apparition

Oct 15 - Dec 5, 2020
PGI

  • ©Yoshinori Marui

  • ©Yoshinori Marui

  • ©Yoshinori Marui

PGI is pleased to announce Yoshinori Marui’s fourth solo exhibition at our gallery following a four-year hiatus. Opening on October 15th, the show will feature approximately twenty prints from his latest series, Apparition.

 

Yoshinori Marui began photographing during his studies at the Tokyo University of The Arts. His early works including The Map (2003), and Along the Coastline (2008), were attempts to use imagination to peel back the layers of perceptible reality to discover new and astonishing details. With Collecting Light (2011), Marui used various images of light captured throughout his travels to press his imagination even further and contemplate the relationship between the photographed subject and the real thing. Point-flash (2016) built upon these ideas and ultimately led to the creation of Apparition.

 

The word apparition originally pertained to celestial bodies. Theodor W. Adorno wrote “the artwork as appearance is most closely resembled by the apparition, the heavenly vision.” This series is a blend of snapshots and photograms. With this integrated approach, Marui has further explored the intersection of the actual and the photographed. He explains, “an image is created in much the same way as an object is perceived by our retinas, or even further, by the way we perceive things using all five senses.” When we look at a series of seemingly unrelated snapshots created by an artist, our minds subconsciously begin searching for meaning within them.

 

This series is an experiment that invites us to consider our natural instinct to ascribe meaning to what we see and, in doing so, to understand and even surpass our current limitations.

 

The artwork as appearance is most closely resembled by the apparition, the heavenly vision. Artworks stand tacitly in accord with it as it rises above human beings and is carried beyond their intentions and the world of things.

Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

 

On the summit of a remote mountain, I turn off all my lights and take in the star-speckled night sky. After a while I try scanning for Polaris and the Big Dipper.

Yet while it so happens that these lights are visible here and now, many of them have died out long ago. Conversely, light from countless other stars have yet to reach us.

 

It occurs to me that the stars in the sky are a lot like the photons that make up a photograph.

 

A star is born, and suddenly its light replaces utter darkness. An apparition. Only those who take the time to look at the sky ever have a chance to stand witness to such an event.

These magical moments occur in photography as well, or so I sometimes believe.

 

September, 2020

Yoshinori Marui

 

 

Yoshinori Marui

Born in Osaka, Japan, 1973.

Graduated from The Department of Design, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo National University of the Arts, 1996.

Completed research course studies, Tokyo College of Photography, 1997. Currently, a professor at The Department of Photography, Faculty of Arts, Tokyo Polytechnic University.

Selected solo exhibitions: Point-flash, PGI (Tokyo 2016), Collecting Light, Photo Gallery International [P.G.I.] (Tokyo 2011), Along the Coastline-from Cape Kyan to Mabuni, Okinawa, P.G.I. (Tokyo 2008).

Selected group exhibition: Okinawa Prismed 1872-2008, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Tokyo 2008).

 

 

PGI Exhibitions

Jun 6 Aug 10, 2016 Point-flash
Jan 11 Feb 26, 2011 Collecting Light
Feb 15 Mar 19, 2008 Along the Coastline - from Cape Kyan to Mabuni, Okinawa