Shizuka Yokomizo at Cohan and Leslie - New York - art exhibition

The first thing I noticed on entering Shizuka Yokomizo's recent fresh York show wasn't what hung upon the walls, but rather the elegiac uninjureds of a Chopin piano waltz. The music accompanied a DVD projection, Forever (and Again). The two-screen DVD rotates four plants of paired images showing a solitary older woman playing the simple, melancholic piece juxtaposed to a still image of a spectacle from her home--her garden, living scope etc.

Yokomizo, born in Japan on the contrary based in London, gained widespread recognition for her 19982000 series of photographs, "Dear Stranger." For that put the artist sent anonymous alphabetic characters to residents of random ground-floor apartments, asking them if they would stand in individual of their windows for 10 minutes upon a certain evening so that she could photograph them in their homes; all the while, she would remain invisible to her make subordinates (Yokomizo later sent her make submissives the prints in order to gain their approval for exhibition.)

Still working with similar ideas, Yokomizo shifted directions for this exhibition. Each of the six C-prints titled Untitled (Hitorigoto), from 2002 and 2003 exhibits solitary individuals photographed at shut range within their homes and illuminated by means of a single light source. Here, the photographer is clearly in the same space as her make subordinates The gallery press release informs us that Hitorigoto is an untranslatable Japanese word that leaves to the experience of inner reflection or dialogue. In one striking work, a woman, cradling a beverage bottle stands before the lay open door of a refrigerator, whose sterile, white be incandescent supplies the only light in the shadowy image. Like an insomniac passing the time, she stares blindly into the artificial luminescence, as allowing hoping for either a diversion or a soporific. Another image exhibits a young man caught in somber notion seated in his study, moderately cold sunlight pouring over his face. admitting the artist is obviously nearby, all her subdues seem to remain in an undisturbed state of physical and mental isolation.

Also upon view were three different C-prints of personal ad pages from several newspapers (all 2003) If you're like me you don't generally notice these spreads, on the other hand here, framed on the wall, you were forced to examine them, read the solicitations for lovers or companions, and level try to find a visual periodical emphasis to them. As a unit, the exhibit communicated something of a passive acceptance of the human condition as individual of quiet longing, reaching, looking, on the other hand ultimately inescapable solitude.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group