An End Is a Beginning
Deutsche Bank Supports the
Tomoko Yoneda Show at the Hara Museum
Tomoko
Yoneda, London, September 2008
Photo:
Dominik Gigler
Tomoko Yoneda's art
investigates collective memory. Whether the Japanese artist photographs
former battlefields or abandoned apartments-Yoneda's photographs always
articulate the tension between the represented motif and its history. Now,
the Hara Museum in Tokyo is giving the London-based artist her first major
exhibition.
Forest
- Location of the Batle of Somme,
Delville
Wood, France, 2002,
from: Scene,
©
Tomoko Yoneda, Courtesy Shugo Arts
A pristine wooded landscape, a summer beach scene dotted
with bathers, a river with a small boat sailing along it-at first, the
motifs in Tomoko Yoneda's
series Scenes
do not seem particularly spectacular. But the titles add a layer of
meaning to the photographic works that references historical and political
events while infusing the images with emotional tension. In Forest
(Location of the Battle of the Somme, Delville Wood, France) from
2000, the 1965-born Japanese artist portrays the setting of what was
probably the bloodiest battle of the First World War, with over a million
dead, wounded, and missing soldiers. The devastated landscape has since
been overgrown by woodland. In Beach (Location of the D-Day Normandy
Landings, Sword Beach, France) (2002), nothing on the beach checkered
with bathing towels ostensibly recalls the dramatic events on June 6,
1944, the day Allied troops landed. Sun worshippers lie on their towels on
the very ground where soldiers were once engaged in deadly battle.
Wedding
- View of the wedding party on the river
that
divides North Korea and China, Dandong, China, 2007,
from:
Scene,
©Tomoko Yoneda, Courtesy
Shugo Arts
Yoneda also depicts a
volatile region in Wedding-View of the wedding party on the river that
divides North Korea and China, Dandong, China (2007). Armed conflict
and escape attempts occur frequently along the border between North Korea
and China. Again and again, Yoneda creates a tension between the
represented motif and the historical reality that lies behind it. The
works' titles function as catalysts to evoke new, vivid images that
starkly alter the viewer's perspective on the apparently innocuous
landscapes.
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Lovers, Dunaujvaros (formerly Stalin City)
Hungary, 2004,
from: After the
Thaw,
© Tomoko Yoneda, Courtesy
Shugo Arts
With Tomoko
Yoneda-An End Is a Beginning, the art photographer presents her first
major retrospective at the Hara
Museum in Tokyo. The show, sponsored by Deutsche Bank, features
approximately 50 works from Yoneda's most important series: Between
Visible and Invisible, Scene, After
the Thaw, and Topographical
Analogy. In a premiere, the museum also shows the London-based
artist's latest works, shown in 2007 at the 10th Istanbul
Biennial and in Robert
Storr's Venice
Biennale exhibition Think With the Senses-Feel With the Mind.
Freud's
Glasses - Viewing a text by Jung II, 1998,
from:
Between Visible and Invisible,
©
Tomoko Yoneda, Courtesy Shugo Arts
The black and white images of Between Visible and
Invisible were made from 1999 to 2003. For the most part, they depict
texts and letters by influential writers, architects, scientists, and
politicians of the twentieth century-James Joyce,
Gandhi, Tanizaki,
Le
Corbusier. Yoneda's camera gazes upon a work that was of key
importance for these intellectual heroes through the very eyeglasses they
once wore. Only the part that can be seen through the lens is legible,
while the rest remains blurry. Le Corbusier's Glasses-Viewing
L'Habitation Moderne, his plan for a new architectural vision of Paris
(2003) shows the architect's notes on one of the most important projects
of architectural modernism. In Freud's Glasses-Viewing a text by Jung II
(2003), the father of psychoanalysis gazes at an essay by his colleague C.
G. Jung, with whom he was connected by a long, conflict-ridden
relationship. This work also addresses a chapter in 20th-century history:
while Freud emigrated to
London following the invasion of Austria by German troops in 1938, Jung's
role throughout the Nazi era remains highly controversial. Yoneda's work
continually explores western culture and history. This interest originally
led her to study photography at the University of Illinois in Chicago and
at the Royal College of Arts in London.
Sniper
View - View from Christian sniper position
overlooking
no man's land, Beirut, 2004,
from:
Scene,
© Tomoko Yoneda, Courtesy
Shugo Arts
Between
Visible and Invisible, the title of this series
seems programmatic for the photographer's entire oeuvre. Yoneda's work
defies any one unequivocal interpretation. These are photographs in which
a single picture has the power to invoke an entire film.
Tomoko
Yoneda-An End Is a Beginning
September 12-November 30, 2008
Hara
Museum, Tokyo
Achim Drucks
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