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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

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  ©Daisuke Morishita

Closed on April 29 – May 5 for the holidays (incl. April 30, May1)

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PGI is excited to announce Daisuke Morishita’s first solo exhibition at our gallery. The core themes Morishita explores in his work are “existence” and “relationships.” Through repetition of the prototypical photographic ritual—to witness reality, click the shutter, print in the darkroom and create a two-dimensional image—he is in fact seeking the primal substance of our world and new levels of immediacy. In January of 2021 his efforts were recognized with the Encouragement Prize of 19th Chiba City Arts and Culture New Artist Award.

In his dealings with others, Morishita claims to have discovered a blankness within himself. At first he only perceived this as a negative, as if he were hollow or delusional. Gradually, however, he began to see this emptiness as a vital element of his creative process.

Dance with Blanks weaves distant landscapes with intimate closeups. The landscapes are comprised of sprawling buildings and trees set against blank skies or gaps in architecture. The distance between body and place is a metaphor for spiritual distance from the world and evokes thoughts of our own existence. The closeup snapshots, on the other hand, offer more visceral imagery. These photographs, while bewildering at first glance, reveal lifelike voids cleverly constructed with monochromatic highlights and shadows and brimming with information. Morishita leads the viewer into the emptiness and leaves them there to fend for themselves.

The word “Blank” in the title Dance with Blanks is also a reference to the Buddhist concept of Kū (emptiness).

Kū, the notion that everything is in a state of flux, was inspirational to Morishita as he set out to capture existence itself. The artist states, “I wish to coexist with this emptiness while creating my own blank spaces upon photographic paper.”

This exhibition will feature approximately 30 gelatin silver prints.

Even if the world is nothing more than a fleeting sensation or a simulacrum, we still go about our lives accepting the names and meanings that have been ascribed to everything.

Learning foreign songs. Faraway mountains with three different names. Birds in the sky. Staring into the moon as if it were a mirror. The pull of gravity. The similarity of our veins to those of leaves. Snow is white and melts away.

We assign subjective importance to these names and meanings based on their relevance to our own lives. Put another way, we are constantly constructing our own worlds. What arises from this, what can never be stripped away from us or our worlds, is freedom. With freedom comes happiness.

Dance with blanks. Go on, dance. The void can never be filled.

Daisuke Morishita

Born in 1977.  Working exclusively in black and white, Morishita has been in pursuit of “pure photography” since his debut in 2005 with Gravity Works (Shinjuku Nikon Salon). His efforts have mainly centered around consecutive solo exhibitions, which have shown an incredible verisimilitude and a unique ability to appeal to the imaginations of his audience.

Lately he has also turned his focus toward photobooks, releasing 3 books via his own publishing company ‘asterisk books’ since 2017. In addition to his own work, he has edited and released Yo Chibazakura’s Wander in the Silence and Mariko Abe’s Voice of a Bird through asterisk.

Choosing to utilize film and photographic paper in the face of the current digital landscape, Morishita aims to reinvigorate our visual culture by enhancing the perceptual and physical experiences of the viewer. In January 2021 his work was recognized with the Encouragement Prize of 19th Chiba City Arts and Culture New Artist Award.