TAB Event - Masahito Koshinaka "Double Word"

Masahito Koshinaka "Double Word"

This event has ended.
At Nichido Contemporary Art
Media: Photography, Art Party

This is Masahito Koshinaka's first solo exhibition, featuring 9 "Double Word" pieces. Continuing on from his previous "Echoes" work, Koshinaka has chosen not humans but plants as his subject, although the meaning of the work does not change, according to him. His work consistently deals with themes of meeting and assembly, and the notion of individuality, and this new series focuses on an individual entity that produces a collectivity and the difference between being on the inside, or outside, of that collectivity. Another key trait of Koshinaka's work is the introduction of temporal elements into this arrangement: a single flower that withers among an entire group of Japanese irises, the prospect of which is then turned into a continuous series of photographs. These works can perhaps be understood as documentary photographs of changes over time. Koshinaka's work is a recognition of recording as the basic function of photography.

However, Koshinaka also takes much care in using photography as a recording medium to memoralize things irreducible to mere information and things that resist verbal expression, a process that relies on his own sense of the reality of such objects. Yet the perception of this "reality" ultimately varies according to the artist. In Koshinaka's photographs, the conception of that reality lies in the identity he lets slip in responding to requests for him to offer explanations about his own work. He understands one's identity through the perception of reality, which is then recorded and transcribed into photography. The sense of identity that resists verbalization that Koshinaka seeks is perhaps hidden somewhere in the relationship between the individual and the collectivity. The sense of identity one feels when being a member of a group is not the same as that which one feels when apart from that group and standing along as an individual.

Extract of essay by Kentaro Ichihara (art critic)