Press Release
MEIRO KOIZUMI
IN BETWEEN THE NIGHT AND SLEEPWALKERS
In the Bakery, we are delighted to present In Between the Night and Sleepwalkers an installation by Meiro Koizumi in which two quintessential works, the video Untitled and the charcoal drawing Discovering the Night #2 meet in a singular installation.
The video Untitled deals with the gesture of making image in an imageless world. It depicts Mr. Tomoya Tsukada while drawing a portrait of his father. Since he was a child his eyesight has deteriorated year by year, and as his sight weakened, his inner sight – the function to connect himself to the world through the visual image – has worn away as well. By now, he does not even remember what his parents look like.
For this project Koizumi has asked Mr. Tsukada to try to recall the image of his parents, brothers, and friends, and to draw them on semi-transparent paper. This allows the portrait of his father and the shadow of his own face to overlap as if he draws a face to a faceless head. The video follows this process until the portrait is finished and then it starts playing backwards to the point when the portrait is erased.
Discovering the Night #2 depicts the moment of life and death the way it is experienced through a FLIR camera. It is based on video registrations of drone operations, made using FLIR infrared thermal cameras. Without this technology the landscape by night would be just darkness, it wouldn't exist. Through the technology of the FLIR camera a new landscape is discovered, and this landscape is a nightmare for some (and spectacle for others). Koizumi presents us with a nightmarish vision of the zooming in of the FLIR camera as one continuous landscape.
A parallel can be drawn between Untitled and Discovering the Night #2, where the image is once again created in a lightless situation through the technology of infrared light camera. Yet, at the same time, they are each other’s opposite: Untitled is highly personal whereas Discovering the Night #2 deals with an impersonal military situation one can encounter online or in the media.
Meiro Koizumi often investigates his own surroundings: Japan’s ritualistic culture and past events. As part of this process the painful reality hidden behind serene facades is revealed, opening up a new reality and possibilities for new ways of resolving the past. In his recent work he broadened the spectrum of his investigation by reflecting on particular events in a way that they can be applied and understood on a global scale.
Koizumi's body of work will be presented in a solo exhibition at De Hallen (Haarlem, NL) from September 24, 2016 to January 8, 2017.
Meiro Koizumi (Gunma, Japan, 1976) lives and works in Yokohama. He studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1999-2002), and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2005-2006). Koizumi had major solo exhibitions amongst others at Arts Maebashi (2015), Kadist Art Foundation (2014) and at the MoMA (2013).