Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present Works from the 1970s, a solo exhibition of works by Luigi Ghirri from May 27 to June 24. From the early 1970s until 1992, when he passed at 49, Ghirri used color photographs to explore metaphysical images. Over two decades, he produced an outstanding body of work characterized by unique chromatic and spatial sensibility. The first solo exhibition of Ghirri’s works at Taka Ishii Gallery will focus on his works of the 1970s, an important period in the development of his oeuvre.
Ghirri spent his youth in the 1950s and 1960s, during a time of economic growth and cultural transition. He familiarized himself with art at this time, and through conceptual art, one of the most popular movements of the era, he began making photographs collaboratively with other artists pursuing photographic images that were not merely documentary recordings. Founded on experimentalism, Ghirri’s photographic practice is neither characterized by the professionalism of the studio photographer nor the amateurism of the photo fan. Through photography, he aimed to address the complexity and incomprehensibleness of the relation between the self and outside world. He trained his gaze at his subjects to acknowledge his positioning between the known and unknown.
The themes and concepts addressed in Ghirri’s works are exceptionally diverse, but his photographs constitute a series of dialectical explorations focused on 'the gaze'. Through his practice, he ceaselessly, intensively, and gracefully explored the relation between reality and image. His photographs demonstrate that images, such as ads and posters in public spaces, can be analytically categorized into 'images turned into reality' and 'reality turned into images'. They also show that the partial extraction and erasure of the world through framing exposes the ambiguous boundaries of reality and the changing form of the landscape, and that images projected by the viewer both produce and erase the actual and fantastic. Ghirri’s photographs are products of a search for harmony and diversity carried out by examining metaphysical binaries, such as reality and appearance (or mimicry), actuality and representation, presence and absence, and inner and outer worlds, at the same level. They indicate that photographs are not faithful reproductions of the world, but rather an assemblage of fragments of the 'seen' world. His works thus suggest that all photographs are testimonies of the gaze and pose an infinite number of questions about how we might think through the image.
A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.
Press release courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery.
Complex 665 3F
6-5-24 Roppongi
Minato-ku
Tokyo, 106-0032
Japan
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The gallery is open by appointment only until further notice.
Taka Ishii Gallery Tokyo (complex665) will be closed from Wednesday April 1st until further notice, in response to the spreading of the coronavirus and in following with advisory guidelines issued by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government that requests people to refrain from going outdoors.