The subjects of Noguchi Rika's mysterious and poetic photographs range from hikers on Mount Fuji to kitchen utensils and cucumbers. Photographed from a distance, the mundane sights in her images become unfamiliar and otherworldly. In capturing ordinary moments, Noguchi seeks to return viewers' attention to that which often goes unnoticed.
Read MoreFollowing her graduation from Tokyo's Nihon University in 1994, Noguchi garnered attention for her evocative photographic style with a focus on snapshots of man in the distance. Formative early series include 'To Dive' (1995), which follows a diver on his way into the sea, and 'Seeing Birds' (1997), which features long-range shots of people on a hilltop. In 'A Prime' (1997–ongoing), the photographs of hikers posed against the vastness of Mount Fuji are reminiscent of Romantic-era artist Caspar David Friedrich paintings, in which a lone figure faces the ocean or surveys the landscape from a cliff. The title suggests the deeply personal nature of Noguchi's work; like indivisible prime numbers, the images cannot be reduced to things other than what they are.
Over the years, Noguchi has built on her early interests in the unnoticed but integral elements of life. The series 'Small Miracles' (2014), in particular, attempts to visualise invisible physical forces. One image shows a drop of honey about to fall from a spoon, implying the pull of gravity; in another image, a metal ring attached to a spoon attests to the presence of magnetic attraction. By acknowledging the presence of these 'small miracles', as the artist calls them, Noguchi seeks to 'make an artwork that one could feel the richness of the world where we live right now, by looking at the photograph.'
Noguchi's interest in technology's effect on visual perception is particularly evident in her 2005–8 series 'The Sun', for which she used a homemade pinhole camera to shoot directly at the sun in various locations. Deliberately allowing the film to become overexposed, she created images that would normally be undesirable in professional photography. When exhibited, the photographs were presented inside a darkened space; each image was individually lit, generating the feeling that the viewer was looking at the sun instead of one of its photographic replicas. By transforming the otherwise familiar encounter with the sun into something unknown, Noguchi reproduced the shock to visual understanding that coincided with photography's invention. At the same time, Noguchi's photographs manifest the medium's ability to bewilder and enchant in a digital world.
For the 21st Biennale of Sydney in 2018, Noguchi exhibited 'Small Miracles' and later works that continue to pursue the beauty of the mundane. The series 'To the Night Planet' (2014) consists of pictures she took on a bus ride in Berlin, where she lived for more than a decade. Presenting the images in the order they were photographed, Noguchi invites the viewer to partake in her experience of the city. Other works in the exhibition, such as Untitled (Oujima), Cucumber 21 August and Cucumber 22 August (all 2017), are snippets of her everyday life in Okinawa, where the artist has been living since her return to Japan in 2016.
Noguchi has photographed various locations—including New York, Miami, Amsterdam, Okinawa and Berlin—and has exhibited just as widely, notably at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2012); Izu Photo Museum, Shizuoka (2011); D'Amelio Terras, New York (2009, 2005, 2003, 2001); daadgalerie, Berlin (2006); and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2004). Her participation in international exhibitions includes the Saitama Triennale (2016); Yokohama Triennale (2011); and the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburg (2008). In 2002 Noguchi received the 52nd Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists. She was also the winner of the 2014 Higashikawa Award for a domestic photographer.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2018
