TAB Event - Naoya Hatakeyama Exhibition

Closes in 10 days
At Taka Ishii Gallery
Media: Photography, Art Party

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce Naoya Hatakeyama's 4th solo exhibition. This exhibition presents approximately 15 photographs from Hatakeyama's recent "Ciel Tombé" series, photographed in Paris, 2007.

In Europe, there are cities that quarried stones directly below an urban area to construct the city itself. Among such cities, Paris was exceptional for undergoing digging on a massive scale. Due to continuous digging from the Middle Ages to modern times, Paris's underground is full of holes to such an extent as to be comparable to Gruyere cheese. In fact, catacombs (underground cemeteries), photographed by Nadar in the 19th century and now famous as tourist spots, were created by using portions of the old quarries.
Hatakeyama, who once wrote in his book "Lime Works" that "Mines and cities are like the negative and positive of a single photograph", noticed that similar structures unfolded vertically in modern Paris and visited the remains of several underground quarries (mostly made of limestone) with the cooperation of Inspection Générale des Carriéres.

"Ciel Tombé" is a term referring to a situation in which the ceilings of the subterranean quarry remains have tumbled down. (A direct translation is "fallen sky".) As abandoning these sites would eventually have harmful effects on construction above ground, thorough consolidation work was conducted by the Inspectorate during the 20th century. Yet some Ciel Tombés were left abandoned in a former quarry called "la Brasserie" that lies 17 meters below the Bois (Forest) de Vincennes that lies at the eastern end of Paris, because only forest - no buildings - existed above ground. No one knows exactly when the "sky fell down".

Opening reception: April 30, Wed, 18:00-20:00

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