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3/10/2008

Nobuyoshi Araki

Museum der Moderne - Rupertinum, Salzburg

Curators: Margit Zuckriegl and Andrea Hofinger

“Realism is reality; that’s wonderful, impressive. I bow down before it and turn myself into a copying machine. Photos are just copies of reality; that is the only truth.”
(Araki in “Bijutsu Techo”, Sept. 1971)

The exhibition “Nobuyoshi Araki – Silent Wishes” includes around 200 black & white photographs by the Japanese photographer. It shows the young, still-unknown Araki, juxtaposing those works with a new series. Acting like a bracket in a text, the calm, quiet pictures from the 1970s on the one hand, and the latest contemplative selection of works on the other, frame the renowned artist’s entire body of work: the eye takes in calm interiors, quiet scenes full of tender erotic tension, a domestic ambience and rows of houses, in a Tokyo beyond the hectic bustling of business. The heart of the exhibition is the intimate series “My Wife Yoko”, describing and circling around the artist’s young wife on their honeymoon, in their own home, and on excursions nearby.
Linked up to this material is a suite of small-format early photographs from the MdM collection, with 60 works loaned from the Leica Gallery Salzburg.

The catalogue “Araki – Silent Wishes” is published to accompany this exhibition. It is the first publication of these previously unshown series, documenting a largely unknown Araki: a highly- sensitive artist, who delicately approaches his motifs and develops a poetic narrative on life, women and secret wishes.

Nobuyoshi Araki was born on 25 May 1940 in Tokyo, where he still lives and works. He studies photography and cinematography at Japan’s Chiba University. After his studies he works at an advertising company and, in addition to his commercial photography work, he begins to use the equipment for his own free ideas. In 1965 Araki opens his first personal exhibition, in Tokyo, with the work “Satchin and his brother Mabo”. Two years later, he gets to know his future wife, Yoko Aoki, marrying her in 1971. Starting from his encounter with Yoko, his wife becomes the preferred model and motif for his photographic research. The documentation of their honeymoon becomes one of Araki’s most important photo series, appearing as publications under the name “Sentimental Journey”.

In January 1990 his wife dies aged 42. Araki links up his grief to commemorative exhibitions.
Death flows more strongly into his works, as a horrifying experience, expressing itself in scenes and motifs which, underneath the surface, deal with the threat posed by death and violence. At the same time, what becomes more distinctly visible is the cultural Japanese context, also depicting the immediate realities of his city Tokyo.
Araki considers the medium of the photo book to be the appropriate opportunity to disseminate and document his work in pictures. He has published hundreds of books, engaging with life in Tokyo and his completely personal view of his city and its environment; simultaneously he documents his relentless passion for photography, in a special way. However the centre-point of his work is the fascination with the erotic, with the other being called “Woman” and the ways in which this fascination becomes entangled in traditional and moralizing perceptions within society.

Image Aus der Serie: My Wife Yoko, 1967-1975, s/w-Fotografie, 25 x 30,4 cm, Österreichische Fotogalerie, MdM Salzburg © Nobuyoshi Araki

Christine Forstner
Presse/Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
T+43.662 84 22 20-601 christine.forstner@mdmsalzburg.at

Media tour: Fr 3.10.2008, 11 a.m.
Opening: Sa 4.10.2008, 11 a.m.

MdM Rupertinum Museum der Moderne
Wiener Philharmoniker Gasse 9, A-5020 Salzburg

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