2009 January 14th – March 27th
Latent matters become visible when one slightly shifts his or her point of view. Such a perspective can at times help narrate reality in a more realistic way than the actual reality, while also acting as an additional tool to more realistically consider such relationships as “to see/to be shown” and “visible/invisible.” The people, landscapes and objects that appear and disappear within the faint light in my works all look distorted inside the flickering, elliptically-shaped film images. The subjects that appear in the film are similar to everyday street scenes that our eyes habitually skim over. Although they do not possess any physical bodies, each appears within our visual field, passes through it, and then disappears as a visible “somebody/something that could be anybody/anything” that is composed of light. This expression alludes to our own present state of affairs in which we can only hold on to realities as “bygones”.
The purpose of this exhibition is to harmonize my work with the viewer’s memory, whether it was in reality or originated within a fleeting dream. My aim is to manifest within the viewers’ minds the fragments of their own concealed, personal memories, and then to associate those fragments with the “act of viewing” my work. I depict matters that exist in the ether between ‘memory’ and ‘oblivion.’ Based on the above-mentioned ideas, this exhibition is composed of an elliptically-shaped filmwork, Oval, and a number of photos./Shinji Koizumi
Visual artist Shinji Koizumi, who also works as a movie projectionist, focuses on the images that are reflected on the projection window. Koizumi’s work prompts the question, “What are human beings endeavoring to see?” Through viewing his works, viewers might be reminded of a view of life that shows something transient and empty. When we are faced with a sublime domain, how is it possible for us to relate to it?
Where are the signals we perceive from a single virtual image, which must first go throughout our neural pathways, destined to reach, and what will they manage to do to our minds?
An entity can only be seen through reality, but we cannot grasp reality merely through the sending out of signals through our neural paths. What is the one other domain left out of necessity? Is the artist/projectionist trying to focus on that domain?/Kurenboh
Shinji Koizumi
Born in Chiba in 1970.
Currently lives in Tokyo.