勝又公仁彦 / Kunihiko Katsumata

Graduated from Waseda University Faculty of Law, and the Inter Medium Institute.

He starts creating literary works, paintings, photography and videos during university. After working in various occupations in both Japan and overseas, he begins to publish his work. Starting with installations, he currently creates works with image media using mainly photography. His works explore the layers of photography through sub-themes such as time, light and space, with diverse subjects. By finding the worlds that could not be perceived, though they exist in our daily lives, he continues to include critical metaphors towards history, society and civilisation in his art, as well as luring viewers to a new awareness.

Main exhibitions include “Photography – 7 contemporary artists” (Osaka Contemporary Art Center, 2001), “Spaces of a landscape: Photography” (Institut Français Tokyo, 2002), “Photography today 2 – site / sight” (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2002), “Natura Morta” (Leica gallery Solms, solo exhibition, 2006), “Dwelling” (Setagaya Art Museum, solo exhibition, 2008), “Kunihiko Katsumata Exhibition” (Mori Arts Center, 2011), “Unconsciousness of the City” (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2013), and “Aichi Triennale 2016” (Okazaki Kosei Site, ‘Trans-dimensional Photos: Images in the Future Tense’, 2016). Selected awards include the Sagamihara newcomer photographer prize (2001), and the New Face Award of the Japan Photographic Society (2005). Works include “Skyline” (2008), “cities on the move Ver.2012” (2012), “Hotel Windows” (2015). His works are in domestic and international public collections including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Setagaya Art Museum and the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum.

Currently serves as associate professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design, and part-time lecturer at Tama Art University.

Maetani’s photographs capture the change in the environment and surroundings brought by the actions of the photographer himself. Self-portraits of him as a subject, stopping his actions halfway and staring bluntly at the camera are also inserted. The changes made by his actions are temporary and often take place away from people’s eyes, but they are far from being private spaces. This suggests that these places where the images are created, are right next to us, or even that we are already inside the darkness of this cave.

(Kai Maetani)

The white looping lines in Matsumura’s works originate in a negative image of ropes. The lines are a shadow that expose the white canvas, and at the same time, they visually bring to the front what is supposedly the bottom-most layer of paints in an inversion. These stripes, ellipses and images with indescribable forms that compose Matsumura’s paintings, show a queer movement and harmony by intricately and dynamically crossing its layers, repeating collision and dismantlement.  This may be revealing part of the construction of the space that Matsumura sees as her motif.

(Saki Matsumura)

Since around 2008, Horii has been creating portraits, contemplating on the small discomforts, as if the body is making noise, in attempt to arouse the senses that are asleep deep inside the body with photographs. His tender camerawork, in between staged photography and snapshots, has been successful in capturing the delicate odour that envelops the bodies of his generation. In recent years since the death of his friend, his photographs have started to become evocative of ‘invisible rivers and seas’ created by the human mind, and reminiscent of the organic images that flow there.

(Hirotsugu Horii)