Recollections vol.2; Tokyo, June 2011 - gallery shots#2

Recollections vol.2; Tokyo, June 2011 - gallery shots

Recollections vol. 2, Tokyo, June 2011 - Reviewed at www.manafinearts.com

Review: Ceres Gallery
April 13, 2012
Masayo Nishimura: Recollections vol. 2, Tokyo, June 2011
 Ceres Gallery

By Tema Stauffer
http://www.manafinearts.com/the-mana-log/2012/04/review-ceres-gallery/

Vernita N’Cognita “Invisible Woman” Thursday, April 12, 7PM, at Ceres Gallery

Vernita N’Cognita
“Invisible Woman”

A performance artwork with Butoh Movement & Butoh Voice
To be presented Thursday, April 12, 7PM, at Ceres Gallery

Vernita Nemec AKA N’Cognita’s performances incorporate Butoh movement, a form of expressive, non-traditional dance that originated in the fifties and sixties among the Japanese avant-garde & now Butoh Voice created from her poetry. In recent years, she has been exploring aging and how our society, so focused on the beauty of youth, negatively perceives women as they age. “The Invisible Woman”, was developed in a residency at the North American Cultural Laboratory (NACL) awarded by The Field. In this work, she focuses with humor and angst on this dilemma all women who survive into their 60’s and beyond must endure.”

“…women become invisible
as they get older
I feel it already
tho I still feel quite young.
I walk down the street
and no one looks at me
like they used to…”

Vernita N’Cognita aka Vernita Nemec is a visual/ performance artist/ curator who has exhibited her art throughout the world. Her artwork ranges across a variety of disciplines, from creating installations, m/m collages and tangible art objects such as the “Endless Junkmail Scroll to the creation of performance art that conceptually investigates theatre and its edges – using language, space, and time, silence and stillness as well as movement and voice as an instrument of self-expression.

--Wonderful show with many audience, thank you Vernita.

Recollections vol.2; Tokyo, June 2011 - statement

Masayo Nishimura
Recollections vol.2; Tokyo, June 2011
Photography

This exhibition features Nishimura’s color photographs of various passersby almost all of which were captured in one sunny afternoon on the streets of Tokyo, Japan in June 2011.

For this project, Nishimura shot around Shinjuku Station--the busiest business and shopping area in Tokyo. However in her images, the pedestrians on the sidewalks and crosswalks appear strangely frozen in the middle of their action while they are moving their feet one step forward toward their destinations. Some are captured while holding umbrellas, some are frozen while conversing with others or talking on cell phones, and some are caught while running hurriedly with long strides - all of these actions are momentary paused. Along with beaming sunlight and dark shadows cast on the ground, the scenes look surreal, fictitious and curiously soundless, even though the actual location is filled with traffic sounds and crowd noise.

In her sequential series of “Scramble Crossing”, Nishimura experiments with the consecutive shooting of people on a scramble crossing. During the brief period of time when the traffic signal changes from green to red, she captures various types of pedestrians as well as vehicles crossing in opposite directions. These paused frames and sequential images reveal interesting “raw” expressions of people in their facial and body language which they are not normally conscious of. On the scramble, each person seems to tell his or her own personal story even though they appear frozen in time.

By using a wide-angle lens with fixed aperture and a relatively high shutter speed with no flash or tripod or close up shot, Nishimura was able to capture all of the images casually and spontaneously as a distant observer without interacting with her subjects. Her approach becomes a sampling of everyday life out on the streets. An added bonus is that these everyday scenes often transform themselves into a unique expression and unexpectedly tell stories by themselves, as also exemplified by her previous NYC subway photographs.

* All the shots are taken with a 35 mm film camera with Fuji color film and hand-printed by the artist on her final stock of Kodak paper.

Note about photography paper used for this exhibition

I have been using only a film camera and do all the printing from negatives by myself in a color darkroom. “Kodak Ektacolor Supra Endura Color Negative RC Glossy Paper, 16 x 20” - a photographic enlarging paper for manual printing made by Kodak - has been used for all of my works since beginning of my career. However, since Kodak announced it would stop manufacturing this paper at the end of 2009, the product became extremely hard to get since it disappeared from the stores very quickly.

By early 2010, I acquired 6 boxes (50 sheets per box) at several stores’ warehouses and this was the last remaining stock that I could find. By the spring of 2011, when I finished my 2011 February show at Ceres gallery, there were only three boxes left unused. Then by the summer of that year, I noticed that the remaining paper started showing some discoloration. The supposedly pure white paper was turning slightly yellowish white, which indicated that the expiration date had almost passed.

Around that time, the director of Ceres inquired about the possibility of my doing another show the following spring. I agreed to do so, not because I had enough new images to show but because I had the paper issue in my mind. I simply wanted to utilize my last remaining Kodak paper before it become completely unusable. So, I took the show’s slot and decided to utilize all the remaining Kodak paper for printing the images that I shot during my stay in Japan, June 2011. Therefore if a viewer at the exhibit notices that the paper used for this show shows subtle differences in shading, it is because of the above reason.

Besides the paper issue, it was difficult to find a decent color dark room since the industry is shrinking rapidly due to a significant decrease in clients. Since the lab where I frequently used past 6 years stopped maintaining equipment properly, I had to move to the much smaller but well maintained lab where young staffs & customers were always chatting so lively, playing music, just right next to the darkroom I was in…though the equipments were okay, I had hard times concentrating.

Anyway I still preferred to print my images for the show on my remaining Kodak paper in darkroom, rather than using another company’s product or changing to digital printing. In January 2012, while I was preparing for this show, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy. I would just like to say thank you to the Kodak Company for having been the producer of my beloved paper and film with which I was able to achieve many creative goals, and also for their 131 years of incomparable dedication to the art of film photography.

Recollections vol.2; Tokyo, June 2011

Artist:
Masayo Nishimura

Show Title:
Recollections vol.2;Tokyo, June 2011
Photography

Show Date:
March 27 - April 21, 2012

Opening reception:
Thursday, March 29, 6pm - 8pm

Short Description:
This exhibition features Nishimura’s color photographs of various passers-by captured on busy Tokyo streets. With her spontaneous style that often freezes moments in time, the artist is able to transform an everyday scene into a unique expression, allowing the viewers to interpret as they see fit.
All the shots are taken with a 35 mm film camera and hand-printed by the artist on her final stock of Kodak paper.