Seen:荒木経惟インスタントフィルム写真展『結界』Nobuyoshi Araki Instant Film Kekkai
When: October 16- December 13 (Closed Mondays & Tuesdays) 14:00-20:00
Where: AM (gallery website / google map)
AM is a new gallery space tucked away in a nondescript apartment complex just a few dozen meters from Meijijingu-mae station in Harajuku. Produced by curator Hisako Mooto of Eyesencia, AM’s inaugural exhibition is a vividly wild and often humorous remix of instant film images by Nobuyoshi Araki.
With a title of Kekkai 結界 (“joined world”) each image- and there are over 500 in this series- is comprised of two totally separate instant photographs. Araki selected pictures, one on top of the other, and with a paper cutter neatly sliced through them at the same time. The opposite halves of the pictures were then paired together to form a completely new image. The pairings are genius- and the precision with which new forms are made are striking and often humorous. It’s a spectacularly torrid mash-up of kimonos and naked appendages and blossoms and food and cities and faces- what in some ways feels like a fractured breakdown of his world is in fact another new beginning.