Yuki Shimizu
Surfacing
Sep 4 - Oct 19, 2024
PGI
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©Yuki Shimizu
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©Yuki Shimizu
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©Yuki Shimizu
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©Yuki Shimizu
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©Yuki Shimizu
PGI is proud to present Surfacing, the gallery’s third exhibition of work by Japanese artist Yuki Shimizu.
Since her debut in 2011 Yuki Shimizu has used photography and the written word to capture places in intricate fictional narratives that incorporate local folklore and history. She uses her camera to confront incomplete landscapes whose totality remains inaccessible, attempting to capture fleeting phantoms that appear only momentarily. Although her approach leaves her with a sense of having been left behind in time, Shimizu says that her encounters with the ceaseless passage of time also serve as a daydream-like inspiration for her texts, which tie together the many details in her photographs.
In Surfacing, Yuki Shimizu imagines alternative narratives and fictional histories in photographs eroded by the tide.
The subject of the series is Tateyama, a town in the south of the Boso Peninsula in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture. Shimizu visited Tateyama while writing her short-story collection Hanazakari no isu (Shueisha, 2022) and was fascinated by its unique topography. During her research, she uncovered fragments of its local history: shipwrecks from the Qing Dynasty, remnants of World War II battles, and an abalone fisherman who emigrated to the U.S. during the Meiji era and was forcibly detained in a Japanese internment camp during the war. Here, in this rural town connected to the world by the sea, Shimizu felt she had found “the ideal place to consider the contours of contemporary Japan,” and “a place that needs to be seen, a place that needs to be photographed.
For Surfacing, Shimizu captured scenes and landscapes around Tateyama, linked by their topological features and historical past. Then, after degrading her negatives with seawater (a technique she previously employed in her series Half Dreaming Glass), she composed storythat blend reality and abstraction. While the surface of the degraded photographs is obscured by scratches, crystals, and traces of different layers, the scenes depicted in her images remain real. In this way, Shimizu’s technique synchronizes with her artistic approach of unraveling histories by weaving new fictions, resulting in new yet strangely familiar landscapes.
Surfacing will feature approximately twenty chromogenic prints created by the artist from negatives altered with seawater, sand, and mold.
Surfacing
A journey from the periphery into the depths of time.
Alternative narratives and fictional histories, told in photographs eroded by the tides.
Once, Okinoshima and Takanoshima were islands separated from the Tateyama coast by a thin strip of sea. In 1703 and again in 1923, the Genroku and Great Kanto earthquakes raised the seabed. Sand continued to accumulate, eventually connecting the islands to the mainland.
Today, Takanoshima has been artificially expanded and is used as the Tateyama Air Base of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. Okinoshima is a national park administered by Chiba Prefecture and can be reached via a narrow, sandy path along the back of the air base. The uninhabited island has rich tide pools formed by the surfacing seabed, and its beaches are always crowded with people enjoying the view.
Okinoshima was a defensive outpost for the Imperial Japanese Navy. There are no signs to hint at this history, except for remaining caves carved into the rocks. The island and the surrounding sea have become a popular photo spot.
The city of Tateyama, located on the southern tip of the Boso Peninsula, served as a frontline defense of the Japanese mainland from the end of the Edo period until World War II. It has also been a rich fishing ground where the Kuroshio and Oyashio currents meet, and a place of exchange with people from across the seas.
Generations have walked the beaches of Tateyama, their footprints washed away by the unrelenting waves.
Drawing on these different pasts, Surfacing captures Tateyama’s landscapes and draws new narratives in film images corroded by seawater.
Yuki Shimizu
English translation by Robert Zetzsche
Born in Chiba, Japan. 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. She began writing novels around 2017 and won 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.
Her publications include Koko ha yoru no mizu no hotori (Shinchosha, 2019), Hana sakari no isu (Shueisha, 2022), Umi ha chikashitsu ni nemuru (Kadokawa, 2023), Shore (Akaaka, 2023).
Her recent solo exhibitions include white sands (Guardian Garden, Tokyo 2012), mayim mayim (NEW ACCIDENT, Kanazawa, 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), The River of Resurrection (A’holic / Studio 35, Tokyo, 2023), Nemurebaushio (Purple, Kyoto, 2023), Shore (Purple, Kyoto, 2024)
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), Summer Vacation at a Certain Art Museum (Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba, 2022), Tokyo Dialogue (T3 Photo Festival, 2022).