PICTURE – FOCUS

Koji Shiroshita

Photo　Masahi Mihotani

at Hitoto, Osaka　Jan 8 – Jan 29, 2022

When do we start calling it “a picture”
or stop calling it “a picture” —
I think this is still a picture.

Where is the essence of a picture?

This is a question that I have been asking myself for the past few years, as opportunities to view pictures on digital device displays through social networking sites have become overwhelmingly common. Does it exist only in the actual so-called “real thing” of the work? What is the difference between an image displayed on a display and a “picture”?

“PICTURE” is an attempt to capture the moment when the paint is still raw as liquid before it is fixed on the support with a photograph, and to present the printed image as a “painting. This act also asks the question posed at the beginning of this article through the process of photographing, printing, and exhibiting. If the “essence” of a picture is that which is painted onto a support by medium, “PICTURE” liberates the “essence” from that.

FOCUS

The boundaries of our sense of distance,
the world that has completely changed
the way we see.

The idea of “focus” came from what is called “blurred image”, such as a blurry picture on social media when my smartphone takes time to load due to limited communication speed, or an out-of-focus background image in a video. For me, the act of capturing those images within those few seconds until the smartphone completely loads it or at the moment the camera pans in the video, can be said to be an act of shooting where I catch the moments that piqued my interest.
Then I draw based on those images that I shot. They, however, are merely what’s known in block printing as printing blocks, so I call them “original images, not “pictures”.The photographer Masashi Mihotani takes multiple out-of-focus pictures of each of those “original pictures”, and I choose one from them, print it, frame it in a painting frame, and then the work is completed.
The layers of brush strokes become flattened with the accumulated information being integrated through the process of shooting and printing, and the essence of the image, which focuses on nothing, is left.In those images, I see the world that looks totally different since the watershed moment that was the appearance of the new coronavirus or the uncertainty about the feelings of distance with people or things that I started to feel because of the pandemic.

Profile

Koji Shiroshita

artist　https://koji-shiroshita.com

Born in Kyoto. Graduated from Kyoto University of Art and Design, Department of Information Design. Among 4186 entries from 52 countries, he had won the 5th prize (the 3rd in Japan) at Art Olympia 2015, an International Open Art Competition.In his fine, dense artworks that are created with ink from a pen or a brush, he sets a contradictory limit of abandoning titles or motifs to establish complete freedom in the picture. In 2020, he released a series of pictures using photography to try to freely move around the essence of pictures.

Masashi Mihotani

photographer　https://masashimihotani.com

Masashi Mihotani (b. 1987, Osaka) graduate of Visual Arts College Osaka’s Photography Department. His practice addresses ideas of awareness and perception, and in recent years has utilized everyday objects in place of film negatives to create color photograms. Initially self-taught, Mihotani has experience working in galleries and contemporary art facilities, and is a current part-time photography instructor at Kyoto University of the Arts and Visual Arts College Osaka. Among his numerous awards and publications, Mihotani was selected for the Japan Photo Award in 2018 by IMA Editorial Director Mutsuko Ota, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Benrido Hariban Award.