Manabu Koga “Cube”

Clear Gallery Tokyo

Finished

Artists

Manabu Koga

This new series, which uses Photoshop editing to place female models photographed underwater inside clear cubes, is inspired by the artist’s childhood fascination with scuba diving, as well as the synthetic, sci-fi aesthetic of the plastic scale models of his youth. Photo editing is an enduring part of Koga’s multimedia oeuvre, as in his previous “Sui-chu Ni-hai” (roughly translated, “underwater high-socks”) series. In one respect, “Cube” combines the artist’s childhood and adolescence (or “shonen”-hood) with his present-day sensibilities, a starting point for Koga’s artistic journey into a new era.

In his exhibition last year at Clear Gallery Tokyo, Koga used Lego blocks to compress various objects, existing in different planes of time, into a singular work. In the works featured in this exhibition, Koga continues to explore notions of extraction and construction, incorporating the tools and aesthetics of modern technology while his works nonetheless remain rooted in the parts of his perspective and worldview that have been constant throughout his life. In blending realism and fantasy, Koga’s works push us to question our own actualities, and we hope this exhibition can help expand our conversations around the possibilities and potential of contemporary photography.

Schedule

May 17 (Fri) 2019-Jun 15 (Sat) 2019