Exhibition Content:
There is a water tank nearly 4 meters in diameter in an empty lot close to the photographer’s house. The top is covered with cement, and neighbors say that it’s empty and unused.
For the photographer, the water tank is a round stage - a stage for his expressions. Seasons, ordinary days, the past, and an expected ending can be perceived in the round and in the space surrounding it - circulating time and rectilinear time.
In the circle, he takes pictures of neighbors, friends, his handicapped daughter, himself, workers, street cats and dogs. He shoots burning cardboard, a small wooden boat, fish in an aquarium, neon and floating lights. He captures images of summer grasses growing around the water tank, a puddle after rain, piles of snow, and melting snow. He shoots all this just as it is, and creates photos by building on what he sees in his mind inside the circle.
These images are real landscapes, and also extraordinary landscapes with metaphors hidden within. Each work reacts with the others, making his unclear world float but come through.
Monochrome: 43 works
Comments:
The awarded exhibition “On the circle” presents a forgotten water tank close to the photographer’s home as the stage.
A disused round water tank is buried in the ground, its top slightly protruding and covered with cement. Attracted by it, the photographer started shooting photos around it. Then he began to see seasons, life, past life and expectations of a conclusion within the circle and the space around it. Family, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, cats, dogs, burning cardboard, floating balloons, a small wooden boat, fish in an aquarium, summer grasses, piles of snow, drifting lights in the dark, waving air… he sometimes shoots it just as it is, and sometimes builds on what he sees in his mind inside the circle. Circulating time, rectilinear time and time rising in spirals cross each other, many things empathized, and a strange topos appears.
“On the circle” is a real place, but also a different place on the earth, and above it, the vast universe spreads.
The photographer says that if there were a moment that the photos taken inside the circle wrapped around the entire universe, he would feel that he - of uncertain existence and anxiety - had been helped for an instant.
“On the circle” successfully visualizes our small evidence of life ? casting a twisted light from the circle to the spiral ? in a way that only photography can do.
HITOSHI FUGO profile
Born in Kanagawa prefecture in 1947.
Grew up in Yonezawa city, Yamagata prefecture from the age of three.
Graduated Nihon University, Art Department Photography major in 1970, at the same time he studied with photographer and filmmaker Eikoh Hosoe.
Has been a freelance photographer since 1973.
Lived in Paris in 1974, in New York in 1977.
Exhibitions (Solo)
1974: “Quiet Days” (Musee Niepce /France)
1975: “Quiet Days” (Gallery Shunju/Ginza)
1976: “Floating Around” (Gallery Shunju/Ginza)
1979: “Floating Around” (Ginza Nikon Salon)
1982: “Dark Changes” (Photo Gallery International/ Toranomon, Tokyo)
“Floating Around” (Stadtparkgalerie/Austria)
1984: “FLYING FRYING PAN” (Zeit Foto Salon/Tokyo)
1992: “Game Over” (Parco/Shibuya, Tokyo)
1995: “FLYING FRYING PAN” (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography)
1999: “Waterfall Watchers” (Photo Gallery International/Shibaura, Tokyo)
2001: “KAMI/Demolition” (Photo Gallery International/Shibaura, Tokyo)
2002: “FLYING FRYING PAN” (prinz/Kyoto)
2009: “WRAP TRAP WRAP” (Cafe lovers/Tokyo)
“On the circle” (Ginza Nikon Salon)
Exhibitions (Group)
1981: “8x10” (Susan Spiritas Gallery/California, USA)
1982: “Three Japanese Visions” (Focus Gallery/California, USA)
1983: “Japanese Art of Today” (Museum of Art & History/Switzerland)
1985: “Paris, New York, Tokyo” (Tsukuba Museum of Photography/Tsukuba City)
1986: “Japanese Photography of Today” (Traveling exhibitions in Spain)
1990: “Polaroid ? Super Photo Exhibition” (Flower Expo International Art Museum/Osaka)
1998: “Futurology in Photography” (Epsite/Shinjuku)
1999: “Japanese Modern Art Photography Exhibition” (Traveling exhibitions in Germany)
2001: “History of Modern Photos II” (Shinjuku Nikon Salon)
2003: “Nihon University Art Department Photography Major, Original Print Collection 30th Anniversary: Original Print Accession Exhibition from Student Taking Photography Major” (Nihon University Art Department Art Resource Center)
2006: “mite! Okayama” (USA Anares Produce Okayama Art Museum)
2007: “Japan Caught by Camera ? Works from the Photographic Art in Japan” (Shanghai Art Museum/ China)
Books
1996: “Yagate Hitoni Ataerareta Tokiga Michite…” (Co-author Natsuki Ikeda/ Kawade Shobo Shinsha.
2007: “Yagate Hitoni Ataerareta Tokiga Michite…” (Kadokawa Bunko)
1997: “FLYING FRYING PAN” (Shazou Kobo)
His works are displayed at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, Hokkaido Kushiro Art Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France and Nihon University Art Department.
