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Indepth Arts News:
"Michiko Kon: Still Lifes"
2000-07-09 until 2000-10-01
San Jose Museum of Art
San Jose, CA,
USA United States of America
Michiko Kon: Still Lifes, the first major exhibition of the photographs of Japanese
artist Michiko Kon to be shown in the Western hemisphere, will travel to the San Jose
Museum of Art on July 9. The exhibition includes approximately 70 of Kon's
black-and-white and color photographs. Kon's dreamlike vision transforms organic
matter - beetles, fish heads, eyes, chicken feet, and scales - into photographic
compositions of exquisite delicacy and technical precision. The exhibition is on view
through October 1st, 2000.
Often compared to Edward Weston's still
life photographs and Arcimboldo's fruit
figure paintings, Kon's work creates a
delicious tension between the animate
and the inanimate. Diverse biological
matter such as fish, plants, and insects
are unexpectedly combined with clothing,
shoes, furniture, and even body parts. A
fish eye peers out from the center of a
rose, salmon roe is delicately balanced
on a toothbrush, and a boot is
gorgeously covered in wispy shrimp,
rosebuds, and fish scales. These
disarming works evoke Surrealism's
interest in dreams, fantasy, and the
unconscious. However, Kon's
photographs go a step further, actively
stimulating all the viewer's senses; we
can almost smell the fish, feel the
scales, and hear the scampering
insects.
Elegant meditations on the nature of time,
Kon's photographs explore the transitory
nature of existence. Despite admitting a
profound fear of death, the artist
deliberately renders most of her images in
black-and-white, symbolic colors of death
in Japan. The artist often incorporates
symbols such as clocks and flowers which,
like the memento mori in 17th century
vanitas paintings, remind the viewer of the
fleeting quality of life. In addition, many of
the materials that she uses in her work are
ephermeral in nature. The photographs
have a lush, sensuous, and overripe
appearance that alludes to the force of
nature to decay and regenerate.
Fish play a prominent role in Kon's
photographs. I feel the close presence
of life and death in fish, the artist says.
An important symbol in many cultures,
the fish has sexual associations and is
also well-known as the earliest symbol of
Christ. Fish are also an important
element of traditional Japanese culture
and diet. Kon is attracted the the textural
quality of fish. Her studio is located near
Tokyo's famous Tsukiji fish market,
where she frequently shops for the raw
material for her photographs.
Born in Kamakura of the Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan in 1955, Kon graduated from
the Sokei Art School in 1978, where she studied woodblock printing, collage, and
assemblage. She later attended the Tokyo Photographic College. Kon's photographs
have been exhibited internationally, and are included in the permanent collections of
the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.
Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has
organized this exhibition and produced the accompanying publication. The San Jose
presentation is organized by Karen Kienzle, SJMA assistant curator.
Michiko Kon: Still Lifes is accompanied by a large-scale catalogue comprised of 64
duotone black-and-white images and 4 four-color images with a narrative by novelist
Ryu Murakami and an essay by art historian Toshiharu Ito; 124 pages; published by
Aperture (1997).
IMAGE:
Goldfish, Salmon Roe, and Toothbrush, 1985,
Gelatin silver print, 24 x 20,
copyright Michiko
Kon, courtesy Photo Gallery International,
Tokyo and Robert Mann Gallery, New York
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