Posted:Jul 1, 2007

Keisuke Shirota’s Photo “Perspectives”

Keisuke Shirota, now at Base Gallery for the second time since his 2003 university graduation, turns snapshots into fine art.

He fixes often blurry, night time street shots and cityscapes onto large canvases, generally considerably more than 1m x 1m large, and paints black and white compositions around the color photos in oil paint. The resulting works seem almost like re-interpretations of the classic perspective; the vanishing points are perfectly centered and completely dominate his works. The snapshots appear to have been captured while on the move, or without looking through the viewfinder. The randomness is chosen and what the composition is lacking within the photographs is made up for in the studied composition of the paintings, a kind of process of “reverse cropping”.

The resulting works seem familiar and nostalgic, perhaps because of the everyday nature of the subjects: a vending machine, the wing mirror of a car, a highway seen from the driver’s point of view. In most of the photos, the streets of Tokyo are depicted as being deserted, adding further intensity to that nostalgic feeling.

Aneta Glinkowska

Aneta Glinkowska

Born in Poland. She has lived in New York since 1996, where she attended college and graduate school. To escape the routine of science labs in college, she went to the movies daily. Following an MA in Cinema Studies, she roams Tokyo as a writer, visiting art galleries daily and blogging about art events. She's looking for opportunities to write about art and cinema for all types of publications. Contact via email: aneta [at] tokyoartbeat [dot ]com.