”Copied, encoded, duplicated and made hollow. It felt like I was on a collision course with collated particles in some sort of queer entanglement wherein by the action of sun stretching across a similar stubble, my identity would not be presented afar until viewed within the setting of this simulacra granular existence of a similar towering architectural homicide by another viewer in a chasm of ill-lucid reflection”.
The encroaching shadow stretches across the grain of my stubble in the awkward and bristling autumnal dusk. Scratching the surface of my worn and leathery features, I let the shadow adumbrate across my features and dampen my vision into blackness as it approaches the cavity where my exposed eye lazily ponders some abhorrent edge of this nullity. I could not see as the zenith moment between where the light is brightest before it collapses into penumbra had left me destitute of vision; its apex of luminosity piercing my iris. However, I could still feel the shadow slowly stretch across the lower half of my jawline. Second by second, the lower part of my face was being enveloped by a new world, a new temperature to it. It felt as though the cover had slipped down my face rendering its features and that my very identity was perhaps being transmitted elsewhere into a parallel world where as the sun rose up on another body, my own features would be transplanted onto it as it gave way from cold shadow to a bright autumn day in an elsewhere world where the edges of nothingness melt away into meanderings of everything. I had been scanned and transplanted by this light. Copied, encoded, duplicated and made hollow. It felt like I was on a collision course with collated particles in some sort of queer entanglement wherein by the action of sun stretching across a similar stubble, my identity would not be presented afar until viewed within the setting of this simulacra granular existence of a similar towering architectural homicide by another viewer in a chasm of ill-lucid reflection. This combination of loose ends colluded with the sun to create the shadowgrain of my weary self displaced and regained without my interior world to punish me.
“It is not an unheard of trick to work with shadow, but to do so convincingly and consistently in the context of collaboration is not an easy task…”
Classon is breakthrough in a way for artists Yoshi Kametani and Daisuke Yokota. Firstly, the tome published by Sun Editions is a monochromatic investigation into parallels of practice that compliment each other very well. Kametani, known for his IPG project with his wife Tamara has really pushed through with this series of striking portraits of Brooklynites covered in shadow, their faces drenched by encroaching silence and darkness. Yokota, for his part, has set down his own work with the body to focus on architectural elements and grain expansion. He has processed his film and expanded the grain within to the point of collapse, which presents to me an idea that maybe he is moving forward in all ways towards abstraction. It is nice to see him train his eye on architecture and to push his aesthetic in a complimenting way to that of Kametani. The reason I am mostly drawn to this book though is the portraits, which I tried to describe above. It is not an unheard of trick to work with shadow, but to do so convincingly and consistently in the context of collaboration is not an easy task, but it is one that I think Kametani has done with great affair. I look forward to seeing more from both, but particularly, Kametani. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Daisuke Yokota / Yoshi Kametani
(All rights reserved. Text @ ASX. Images @ Daisuke Yakota Yoshi Kametani.)