Minoru Shimizu

A cynical beginning – TOLOT heuristic SHINONOME The end of March was art fair week in Tokyo, but I found the art space TOLOT heuristic SHINONOME, newly opened in Shinonome, more interesting than the likes of Art Fair Tokyo andView More >

‘B-grade horror’ reputation – documentation and mediacy The criticisms in my previous two columns dealing with Lieko Shiga’s exhibition “Rasen Kaigan,” or what have been dubbed the “Lieko Shiga = B-grade horror” theory, were penned to provide some balance toView More >

The meaning of photography, or, B(latent)-horror effects (2) One can detect in Lieko Shiga’s photographs any number of effects familiar to us from “creepy photography.” Streaming light, water, etc. (ectoplasm, ethereal bodies, mysterious light, blood, liquid, etc.) Above: From theView More >

The meaning of photography, or, B(latent) horror effects (1) Installation view of “Lieko Shiga: Rasen Kaigan.” Photo Lieko Shiga, courtesy Sendai Mediatheque Photographs are endowed with both a certain physical substantivity, to the extent that they are “traces” left byView More >

On ‘reproduction’ – The tea bowls of Kohei Nakamura (Part 2) Kohei Nakamura – Red Raku tea bowl (2012) Kazuo Yagi wrote an interesting essay on the subject of “reproduction”: On Kiyomizu-zaka there was an artist skilled in “reproduction.” HisView More >

On “reproduction” – The tea bowls of Kohei Nakamura (Part 1) Kohei Nakamura – Wall: Rules of Form (2012). Foreground:Throne of Idea (2004). Installation view at “Art Crafting Towards the Future (2012) at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art,View More >

Frames ≠ layers: The photography of Tamotsu Kido Born in 1974 and a graduate of the oil painting course at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, Tamotsu Kido is familiar to those in the know as a photographer.View More >

Critical Fieldwork 28 Neither decolorized nor faded – The latest color photographs by Daido Moriyama (Part 3) As is well known, Stieglitz “seceded” from pictorial photography that did no more than mimic symbolist or impressionist painting to pursue “the ideaView More >

Neither decolorized nor faded – The latest color photographs by Daido Moriyama (Part 2) Let us summarize the main points so far. 1) Looking back at Daido Moriyama’s “photographs of memories” from the second half of the 2000s onwards, weView More >

Neither decolorized nor faded – The latest color photographs by Daido Moriyama (Part 1) Daido Moriyama – Tokyo (2012) All images © Daido Moriyama, Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery and Office Daido. We often say things like “a single photograph”View More >