AMSTERDAM. Fino al 6 luglio il Foam ospiterà la mostra del giovane fotografo Daisuke Yokota i cui lavori sono stati selezionati nell’ambito dell’Unseen Exhibition Fund. La mostra presenta la serie Site/Cloud, immagini in prevalenza bianco e nero (solo a volte con un pizzico sottile di colore) che mostrano un inquietante mondoin cui si manifestano ombre e apparizioni in contrasto con le rappresentazioni colorate di cieli e nuvole.
Apparentemente il lavoro di Yokota sembra, a prima vista rispettare i canoni della tradizionale fotografia giapponese. Tuttavia, un attento esame del suo lavoro rivela un approccio individuale in cui gli elementi di processo e di intervento svolgono un ruolo importante. Yokota, infatti, utilizza una combinazione di fotografia digitale e pellicola tradizionale per scattare e riscattare immagini che poi manipola utilizzando altre tecniche come fotocopie e Photoshop. Per stampare le foto, poi, ha costruito una camera oscura improvvisata nel suo appartamento in modo da sperimentare liberamente tecniche analogiche e differenti processi chimici.
Yokota aggiunge strati su strati al suo lavoro e ogni strato offre nuove potenzialità per l’immagine successiva. I lavori sono in parte ispirate da musicisti elettronici come gli Aphex Twin che Yokota prende le stesse idee di eco, delay e riverbero che influenzano il senso del tempo nella loro musica e li applica al proprio lavoro visivo.
English version. During last year’s Unseen Photo Fair, an international jury of young curators selected the Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota (born Saitama, 1983) and rewarded him with a solo exhibition in Foam. This selection took place as part of the inaugural Outset | Unseen Exhibition Fund. Yokota is part of a leading young generation of Japanese photographers. The exhibition presents work from his Site/Cloud series. His images in predominantly black and white – sometimes with a subtle hint of colour – show a haunting, indefinable world with shadowy, anonymous apparitions and nondescript places, contrasted with sublime, colourful representations of skies and clouds which evoke feelings of timelessness.
With his strongly contrasted black-and-white photography, Yokota seems to, at first glance, be working in the Japanese photography tradition. However a close examination of his work reveals an individual approach in which the elements of process and intervention play an important role. He uses a combination of digital photography and traditional film to shoot and re-shoot images, which he then manipulates further using other techniques such as photocopying and Photoshop. He has set up an improvised darkroom in his apartment where he can freely experiment with analogue techniques and chemical processes, where chance is also allowed to leave its traces on the final image. Yokota adds layer upon layer to his work, with each layer offering new potential for the next image, leading to alienated, mysterious and poetic representations of a different sort of world.
The works – whose endless repetitions take them further and further away from the original image – are partly inspired by electronic musicians such as Aphex Twin. He takes the same ideas of echo, delay and reverberation that influence the sense of time in their music and applies them to his own visual work. Yokota feels that the lack of a sense of duration and perception of time is a weak point in photography, so he experiments with other ways of evoking the aspect of time in his work. For example by creating images that refer to memories, dreams, or mindscapes that enable the viewer to make a mental journey through time.
