My love for photography materialized in the camera my father, a commercial airline pilot, brought back from Japan. It was an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic. This magical instrument fascinated me. I grew up with Time and Life magazine, the latter of course featured lots of photography. My path really changed, though, after seeing exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam by James Turrell and then Nam Jun Paik. In the work of these artists, I felt the presence of the maker.__
In the photo of Ayumu Hirano, you can see a figure on his knees at the bottom of the halfpipe, presumably another photographer. Often people ask if that's me, but I meant this in homage to romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. The Rückenfigur, an archetype in works of art, is a person seen from behind contemplating the view of a landscape. Clearly it's not me because I am behind making the image. This photo is about the moment that I realized that there is a maker of the work.
Ari Marcopoulos
MAKI Gallery is pleased to present Brooklyn-based artist, photographer, film and bookmaker Ari Marcopoulos's first exhibition with the gallery, Against the Current, at MAKI / Tennoz II, Tokyo. Although Marcopoulos is most known for his photographic works documenting American subcultures, such as leading artists, musicians, skateboarders, and snowboarders, the scope of his practice is much more extensive. Over the past four decades, Marcopoulos has consistently captured a wide range of diverse subjects from his everyday life. His partner and artist Kara Walker, close friends, and quotidian objects like trees and cars make regular appearances in his work. Marcopoulos's interest lies in capturing his subjects' lives as they are in the moment, with no intention of dramatising or commercialising them. The works emerge out of a genuine interaction, where the artist and the subject acknowledge each other with honesty and authenticity. The resulting images successfully deliver the intimacy of individual personality without redundant sentimentality, essentially representing a candid archive of different people's lives.
Bookmaking is a key part of Marcopoulos's artistic practice; he has produced over 200 books and limited-edition zines throughout his career. The artist uses this medium not only as a tool to organise his works and connect with a wider audience, but also as a means to share his creations with the very individuals he captured, completing their evolution from subject to recipient to viewer. This derives from his belief that a work is only finished when it circulates outside of himself. Inspired by what he encounters at any given moment, Marcopoulos mixes and matches his past works to devise thoughtfully constructed layouts that are then compiled into books or zines. By doing so, he aims to create layered images that readers can relate to their own personal experiences and prevent any specific narrative from emerging. For Marcopoulos, exhibitions are a continuation of this practice. In the gallery space, where his works are arranged in certain sequences and rhymes, the images become shared experiences in which viewers may recognise something that resonates with their own life.
Included in this exhibition are new works that emerged out of Marcopoulos's October 2022 project to depict the world's top snowboarders at a snowboard park in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Butter, a video/sound piece, is the result of an ambitious attempt to document 23-year-old snowboarder Lucas Foster as he completed a full run alone on an empty halfpipe. It captures the rider existing entirely in the present moment, focused exclusively on what is at hand, aware of everything and nothing at the same time. In this captivating scene, the only audible sound is Foster's board coarsely sliding along the compacted snow and ice, and then, when suspended in mid-air, complete silence. It is in this abrupt quiet where we confront a life lived with intention, in the here and now.
Artist Pierre Huyghe describes his encounter with the work as follows:
Marvellous as usual, classic Ari, that halfpipe is an invisible sculpture, it somehow appears lit by some invisible spotlights, but what makes everything, more than the mid-air suspensions, it's the suspension of sound, the silence, the silence that nearly becomes an object.
There is the snow and silence, it's winter snow sound, very matte, the snow absorbs all parasite noises and only the main ones pop up, as if it was extracted from the rest, as an individual. Or in an anechoic chamber. And so the silence becomes that very defined object/event.
Influenced by the artist's time in the Alps, many of the selected works in this show include images of lone human figures surrounded by vast expanses of nature. Marcopoulos states that being in the majestic mountains was a spiritual experience which made him acutely aware of the immense scale of the universe, as well as humanity's place in it. The works, which depict Marcopoulos himself, his partner, friends, athletes, artists, musicians, strangers, and their surroundings, could be seen as portraits of how every solitary human being develops their own way of dealing with what is in front of them.
Although many of the exhibited works may seem straightforward and familiar at first sight, they simultaneously alienate us by encapsulating the various invisible, inexplicable presences in our lives, such as the subtle atmospheric changes that occur in a specific place. For example, in the work Aura, it is unclear what exactly is being photographed—perhaps it is referring to an existence that is beyond human comprehension.
Marcopolous is committed to being in the moment with his subjects, yet at the same time, he is keenly aware that he cannot escape his own perspective. Continuously challenging his own way of working, the artist persistently captures what is before him, all the while actively seeking new paths for himself by navigating "against the current" with a sense of critical doubt. Against the Current offers a glimpse into what Marcopoulos values and attempts to achieve as an image-maker.
Born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Ari Marcopoulos lives and works in Brooklyn. Since arriving in New York in 1979, Marcopoulos has produced a remarkably diverse oeuvre, portraying leading artists and musicians, skateboarders and snowboarders, and most consistently, the people and places that he encounters in his day-to-day life. ln a body of work that demonstrates a rare empathy for his subjects, Marcopoulos neither patronizes tentative expressions of identity nor romanticizes youthful freedom. His straightforward portraits and lush snapshots capture everyday moments of beauty and anxiety, becoming, as he says, "something that just stands for life lived."
MAKI Gallery was first established in Tokyo in 2003, with the aim of promoting works by seminal avant-garde Japanese artists of the 1950s-60s. The gallery has since gradually shifted its focus to working with emerging contemporary artists. After opening a location in the bustling, high-end shopping district of Omotesando in 2014, MAKI Gallery opened an expansive, museum-caliber space in the growing gallery hub of Tennoz in 2020. Across these two outposts, MAKI Gallery presents a broad range of works by internationally active artists, including Mungo Thomson, Miya Ando, Susumu Kamijo, and Marius Bercea, while also introducing younger Japanese artists, such as Anne Kagioka Rigoulet, Keisuke Tada, and Takuro Tamura, to a global audience. The gallery has also participated in various international art fairs such as Frieze New York, The Armory Show, Asia NOW, and West Bund Art & Design.
