Japanese Contemporary Photography

Asuka Katagiri

TAI Gallery is pleased to announce the debut exhibition in the United States of unique compositions of light and color by Asuka Katagiri.
Capturing sky, air and light as substance and color, Katagiri creates tangibility from the intangible. He distills their essences into quiet meditative compositions vibrating with life.
In an unconventional use of photography, Katagiri opens the camera's shutter to the empty sky discovering glorious variations of color and emotion. Free of any post-shooting manipulation, his work does not demand that the viewer interpret it with signifiers and references, instead, it asks us to stop and contemplate a moment of light.
Katagiri has had a lifelong fascination with the day and night skies starting at the age of 13. After experimenting with a point and shoot camera belonging to his family, he saved up and purchased a Nikon SLR. Since that time Katagiri was guided with a singular focus leading to the artwork he is creating today. He has exhibited in group shows in Japan as well as a solo show at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.


Artist's statement:
"Experiences at the deepest level of consciousness occur almost automatically, regardless of a person's degree of self-awareness. Such experiences contain all the forgotten memories, hidden emotions and intentions, which do not usually rise to the surface. In photography, similarly, images are automatically formed. They are captured by light through invariable laws, and become visible as a world quite different from the world we are familiar with. Some things can be made visible by capturing them whole, rather than by disassembling them into constituent parts.
Looking at light that reaches us from outer space, I ponder its significance, and the space and time through which it has traveled.
Those experiences at the deepest level of consciousness will be healthily forgotten. But this does not mean they have not been felt, it is just that one may not realize it immediately, as they affect only the deepest levels.
I believe that looking at something continuously can lead down to those deepest levels. That 'something' can be shared."
- Asuka Katagiri

Artist's resume:
Asuka Katagiri born Tokyo 1971
Graduated from Department of Photography, Nihon University College of Art 1994
Work for Ryukotsushin-sha (magazine publishing company) 1994-96

Selected solo exhibitions
"Breath of the Earth" Gallery TRAX Yamashi 1997
"Wind" Art Cocoon, Tokyo, 2001
"Wind" Artland Gallery, Kagawa 2001
"The Sea" Art Cocoon, Tokyo 2002
"Pacific+" Gallery WALL, Tokyo 2002
"Kuon+" Photo Gallery International, Tokyo 2003
"Light Navigation" Photo Gallery International, Tokyo 2005

Selected Group Exhibitions
"Light and Shadow, First there was light/ First Encounter with Light in Photographic Art" Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography 2006
"Second Nature" 21-21, Tokyo 2009


Ordering Asuka Katagiri Photographic Prints

TAI Gallery offers prints of Asuka Katagiri's photography in the following formats:
Kuu: image size 15.5" x 15.5" Edition of 10. $2,950.00
Light Navigation: Small image size 15.5" x 15.5" Edition of 5. p.o.r.
Large image size 31" x 31" Edition of 3, selected images available. $9,950.00