Yuki Shimizu

Half Dreaming Glass

Aug 22 - Oct 5, 2022
PGI

Yuki Shimizu

Half Dreaming Glass

Aug 22 - Oct 5, 2022
PGI

  • ©Yuki Shimizu

  • ©Yuki Shimizu

  • ©Yuki Shimizu

  • ©Yuki Shimizu

  • ©Yuki Shimizu

  • ©Yuki Shimizu

PGI is pleased to present Half Dreaming Glass, the gallery’s second exhibition of photographic works by Yuki Shimizu.

          The accomplished artist and writer Yuki Shimizu creates fantastical worlds using photography and the written word. Her photographic work has been distinguished with awards such as the 5th 1_WALL Award in 2011 and the Miki Jun Award in 2016. As a writer, Shimizu received the R-18 Shinchosha Literary Award in 2018 for her book Koko wa yoru no mizu no hotori (Shueisha, 2019). She has held numerous exhibitions of her works, including Empty Park (PGI, 2019), Mare Cognitum (Chiba City Museum of Art, 2021) Hundred years glass (Chiba Citizen’s Gallery Inage, 2021), and Cold Sleep at the Chiba City Festival of Arts (Chiba, 2021). Her most recent publication is the short-story collection Hanazakari no isu (Shueisha, 2022).

          Since her debut in 2012, Yuki Shimizu has pursued the act of photographing and turning landscapes into artworks. Using both photography and text, her work weaves intricate fictions built on research into local histories and folklore. She continues to use her camera to confront incomplete landscapes whose totality withdraws from access, attempting to photograph fleeting phantoms that appear only for moments. Although she has stated that her practice always leaves her feeling continually left behind in time, the dilemma of time’s ceaseless passage actually serves as a daydream-like inspiration for her texts, which bind the many details within her photographs together.

          Shimizu developed the Half Dreaming Glass series following her 2021 exhibition Hundred year glass at the Former Kamiya Denbee Inage Villa in Chiba’s Inage district, which examined glass that was witness to the changes of the local shoreline over the decades.

          Half Dreaming Glass expands on this idea, with Shimizu visually interrogating glass that witnessed the stories and histories of nearby landscapes unfold. From the Inubosaki Lighthouse in Chiba to the historic Lake Biwa Canal, the artificial Port Island in Kobe or seawalls in the Tohoku region, the glass in Shimizu’s photographs observed the modernization of their local sceneries, whether through major economic changes or tremendous damage from natural disasters.

          The PGI exhibition of Half Dreaming Glass features around twenty chromogenic prints made by the artist using negatives which were aged and eroded using seawater, sand and organic matter. Through these processes, scratches, dust, sand grains and mold are made to appear within Shimizu’s original images, and the story of the glass itself becomes visible in the pictures.

 

 

 

Glass fulfills people’s wish to see something.

 

Glass near the sea braves relentless erosion and shows the world of water to those fated to live on land. Windows of a house keep out wind and rain and dust and snow yet illuminate the safe interior with hues of blue. Glass openings in seawalls grant people in disaster-stricken areas nostalgia-filled glimpses at the old beaches beyond. At night, glass lets light escape from inside and allows the sea to keep track of the shore’s whereabouts.

 

Glass has a visual memory, too. In the earliest days of photography, images were recorded on glass plates. Still today, its transparency makes glass an indispensable part of various optical machinery.

 

My portraits of glass placed between people and the water reveal memories of the modern city.

 

I photographed glass that is witness to drastic changes of the landscape due to human activity: seawall windows along the coastline, the former shoreline of Tokyo Bay, the historic Lake Biwa Canal, the remains of artificial islands. Once the photographic film was developed, I treated it like the glass whose images it captured. By applying organic matter, having mold grow, and exposing it to dust, sand and seawater, I let the film undergo a concentration of the natural stimuli that may befall a glass window out in the world.

 

Yuki Shimizu

 

 

English translation by Robert Zetzsche

 

Yuki Shimizu

Born in Chiba, Japan in 1984. Graduated from Musashino Art University, Japan in 2007. Shimizu received the 5th photography 1_WALL Grand Prize in 2011 and the 18th Miki Jun Award in 2016. In 2018, she received the R-18 literary Award for her work as a novelist. Shimizu uses photography and prose to weave stories rooted in the history and lore of her landscapes. She has recently started writing novels as well. In 2019, she opened the tide/pool gallery in Funabashi.

Her recent solo exhibitions include white sands (Guardian Garden, Tokyo 2012), mayim mayim (NEW ACCIDENT, Kanazawa 2014, UNDO, Tokyo 2014), Killing bear (Nikon Salon, Tokyo 2016), Dear my phantom (Kanzan Gallery, Tokyo 2018), To the underground (Nikon Salon, Tokyo 2019), Birthday beach(tide/pool, Chiba 2019), Birthday beach (nap gallery, Tokyo 2019), Empty park (PGI, Tokyo 2019), Mare Cognitum, (Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba 2021), Hundred years glass, (Chiba City Gallery Inage, Chiba 2021) and Cold Sleep, (Chiba Foto, 2021).

Recent group exhibitions include the 5th 1_WALL photography exhibition (Guardian Garden, Tokyo 2011), INDEPENDENT LIGHT vol.01 (Shinjuku Ophthalmologist Gallery, Tokyo 2012), INDEPENDENT LIGHT vol.03 (Higashikawa International Photo Festival, Hokkaido 2013), Nishine-Nale 2014  (Yamagata 2014), Nakanojo Biennale (Gunma 2015, 2017) and Creative Coast Inage (Chiba City Gallery Inage, Chiba 2017).