| For more than a
decade the Japanese artist-photographer Nobuyoshi
Araki (1940, Tokyo) has been causing a stir in
the Western art world: his images of female
nudes, particularly his images of nudes tied and
restrained in various ways, linger on in the
minds of most of those who see them. So it is all
too easily forgotten that his output is
strikingly varied, as the current show in our
gallery demonstrates. Araki is fascinated above
all by the things that surround him in his daily
existence, be it buildings, flowers, plants,
women, food or the skies above Tokyo. For Araki,
everything in his environment is equally
picture-worthy, so he takes photographs without
making any distinction between subjects for their
supposed 'significance' or lack of the same. The fascination of the female body, not
least in a state of abandoned ecstasy, is a
constantly recurring theme in Araki's work. His
'eroticizing' gaze, however, driven by the desire
to lose himself and all his senses in the subject
he is portraying, also takes in the sensuous
surfaces of seductive foods or the intense
colours deep inside a flower. Seen through the
eye of Araki's camera, even the urban environment
of Tokyo - with its labyrinthine streets and
high-sided alleys - takes on an utterly sensual
character and becomes a cityscape with female
allure.
While other artists pride
themselves on the succinctness of their pictorial
output, Araki, by contrast, seems a positively
hyper-active, obsessively productive
photographer. Tirelessly he creates a
never-ending stream of pictures, of which the
public can only see a small fraction in
exhibitions and in his books - now more than a
hundred in number. Araki's prolific creativity
reflects his unfettered need to communicate, and
opens the pages of an unspruced-up photographic
diary to the viewer, who is then drawn, even
involuntarily, into a private, pictorial
universe. Since Araki also brings certain taboos
and desires baldly out into the open, he is
constantly up against the censors in his own
homeland. He is well aware that some of his
pictures defy current notions of what is
acceptable in art.
The present show in Bob Van
Orsouw gallery is already the third devoted
solely to work by Araki, who has meanwhile
achieved cult-status in Japan. The show itself
consists of black and white prints - which bear
witness to Araki's masterly handling of light and
shade - and colour photographs, which are
astonishing for the sheer, glowing strength of
their colours. The works were selected in close
collaboration with the artist, giving viewers a
chance to see a wide cross-section of the output
of this major photographer over the last three
decades.
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