Osamu Kanemura at Yoshii - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

A horizontal rank of 62 unframed black-and-white photographs (all 19 by the agency of 23 inches, untitled, dated 1995) ran around the couple rooms of the gallery. The photos were point aimed ated together and almost seemed to strike against each other for space, which was entirely appropriate to the imagery. In this display Osamu Kanemura contradicted the Zen stereotype of Japan by dint of presenting the cluttered, chaotic, visually cacophonous verity of Tokyo, city of hordeed millions.

The look of the images is shocking, smooth to those who know the city, because Kanemura violates individual of the "rules for survival" in Tokyo: at no time take a long view. There are no grand boulevards as in Paris or orderly grids as in Manhattan. Tokyo, like greatest in quantity Asian cities, is a yield of growth, not design. It can be beautiful if single attends to the immediate, to the doorstep gardens, the fabrics of walls, fences and tiles. on the contrary Kanemura does not focus upon the foreground. He looks down the narrow lanes. He aims his camera slightly upward, to take in the replete panoply of signs and wires.

His sites are generic. He photographs neighborhood shopping ways and nightlife districts that gaze the same in all parts of the metropolis. There's not a landmark in sight, or flat an example of attractive contemporary architecture, solitary noodle shops, karaoke bars, seasonal decorations hanging from lampposts, and wires, wires, wires. There is cultural information for Americans here: where the highways can be seen, they're in useful condition and litter free. Also, hardly anywhere, smooth in the most commercial sites, is vegetation completely absent. There are rooftop gardens, small road trees, or large potted plants outside restaurants and stores.

Kanemura intensifies the visual confusion with his spontaneous framing. The direct the eye of his scenes is too random to be described as "composition." He must let fly from the hip. Although there's no horizon in sight (there at no time is in Tokyo), one repeatedly has the sense of being tipped not on balance. Vision is often obscur by means of deep shadows as well as through the multitudes of light fixtures and signs. In short, there is no conventional photographic artistry to Kanemura's work, sole the freshness, strength and accuracy of his vision.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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