C
o nt a ct s h e e t
NUMBER 133
K a n a ko S a s a k i
C o nt a ct
s h e et
is published by
L ig h t W or k a non-profit, artist-run photography organization
Rober t B. Menschel Media Center 316 Waverly Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13244 (315) 443-1300 • fax: (315) 443-9516 w w w. l i g h t wor k.or g
Jeffrey Hoone
D irector
Hannah Frieser
A ssociate D irector
Mar y Lee Hodgens
P rogram M anager
Vernon Burnett Jessica Heckman
P hotography L ab M anager P romotions C oordinator
John Mannion
D igital L ab M anager
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C hair
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S ecretary
Vernon Burnett, Sylvia de Swaan Hannah Frieser, Michael Greenlar Jeffrey Hoone, Glenn Lewis Scott Strickland, Kim Waale
C ontact sheet is published five times a year and is available from Light Work by subscription for $40. This is the eighty-first exhibition catalogue in a series produced by Light Work since 1985.
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ISSN: 1064-640X • ISBN: 0-935445-43-9 Contents copyright © 2005 Light Work Visual Studies, Inc., except where noted. All rights reser ved.
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K a na k o S a sak i View
Here
from
August 22–Octo b e r 2 2 , 2 0 0 5 Reception: September 29, 6–8
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Photography has the ability to wrap whole novels into a his competitors. Sasaki’s recurring theme of mortality and single image. One look and the viewer can absorb the mood, human toiling finds its inspiration elsewhere. the narrative, and the key characters. Much like reading a Sasaki sets her figures apart within the grandness of book, the story unfolds and an event unravels. Some stories nature, inspired by childhood memories, novels, and Ukiyo-e are short and to the point; others are lengthy and complipaintings. Ukiyo, literally translated as “floating world,” is a cated. Kanako Sasaki’s images are both. By casting herself as Japanese genre in literature and painting that developed in the single protagonist or including just a few characters in the sixteenth century. It depicts a reality that embraces the each frame, Sasaki is able to build many layers of suggested coexistence of life and death. As Sasaki describes it, “death narrative into each image. These layers hold many surprises comes later, but we can enjoy life now.” Common subjects built with humor and a quirky, unexpected depth. Many are in Ukiyo-e paintings were taken directly from daily life, or reminiscent of William Hogarth’s engravings, specifically the later in the art movement, concentrated on the hedonistic Marriage A-la-Mode series, but with pleasures of life. While Sasaki’s the plot rolled into only a single photographs may look distinctly character. While Hogarth’s moraldifferent from the highly stylized istic world reveals the darker side Ukiyo-e paintings, they share their of society where each character philosophy and sentiment. is blackened by their sinful actions, Sasaki’s photographs have Sasaki’s characters are light and act immediate appeal, with their beyond moral scrutiny. unabashed humor and reawakened If Sasaki’s images are novels, a innocence. Her work has an edge prankster must have made off with that magnifies a common moment the last few pages. Her images stop to one of universal import. Many of mid-story and never explain themthe images playact death, reflecting As a Bird, 2004 selves. As photographs, they have the artist’s fascination with her own an assumed level of self-authentication as something that mortality. As a child Sasaki assumed she would live forever. really happened if only for the camera, yet as self-portraits She says in a way she subconsciously still does, but has been they require greater scrutiny. In general, photographic able to practice the act of dying in her photography. “It’s not self-portraiture can be grouped into portraiture of the self so hard,” she jokes. and a staged portrait using the self. One has a documentary In her images Sasaki captures energy, joy, childlike wonder, nature, and the other a fictional storytelling nature. There and naivety. In the world of her pictures social etiquette can be little doubt that Sasaki’s work falls into the latter does not matter, and occasional embarrassment is accepted category, along with one of the earliest self-portraits known as a fact of life. Only the expression of emotion as action is in the history of photography by Hippolyte Bayard. Bayard’s important in Sasaki’s sometimes upside-down world. Sasaki 1840s photograph titled The Drowned depicts the artist as rejects suggestions that her work is primarily about sexuala drowning victim. Anecdotal history explains that Bayard ity or women’s issues. Notions such as coquettish flirting, photographed himself as a victim of a dramatic death to beauty, and feminism are relevant, but not her central point. express his frustration of having been cheated of profesYet it is difficult not to see a celebration of ‘girlishness’ in the sional acknowledgement (and a government stipend) by playful photographs. Sasaki says she would consider a male
series, but currently is not planning one. “There is no embarrassment for a man showing his underwear.” And she jokes that men just have “too much detail.” Many images frame human gesture against the bigger, but generic landscape. As Sasaki borrows the settings to create her “miscellaneous places,” she draws on memories of growing up in a rural area. She says that even today she “pays attention to how nature grows.” Sasaki’s location scouting typically begins with a general idea and basic sketches, but the final images are often spontaneous creations as she performs and brings to life a reality of her own making. Most of the images were photographed in the United States, primarily around Ithaca and Syracuse, New York, using herself and other Japanese women. While possibly looking “far-eastern” to a Western audience, the landscape looks decidedly “western” to an Asian audience. Even the title can be viewed from many different angles. View from Here asks but does not answer the implied question “View from where?” In Kanako’s work, a Japanese photographer is photographing Japanese figures in America for a global audience. In the end her work only implies the specific cultural viewpoint of herself as a Japanese photographer. In cases where photographers point a camera back at themselves, the customary spectator-subject relationship is twisted into an endless loop of subject viewing subject. The audience is not only looking onto this scene from the camera’s perspective, but also from the subject’s viewpoint. Sasaki exaggerates this tension further by using extreme shooting angles from high above or very low to create a psychological tension that keeps the viewer from feeling too comfortable. In painting and photography alike, women are often depicted in passive poses, staged for the gaze of the lusting, judging male artist. Yet, without an external viewpoint, there is a noticeable absence of a male gaze in Sasaki’s photographs. In the Greek myth of Pygmalion a male sculptor created the perfect woman from ivory, superior to her counterparts of living flesh. He fell in love with his own creation and prayed
to the goddess Aphrodite until she brought the statue to life, and he was able to wed her. In Sasaki’s images the story seems to take a different turn. The target of the male gaze seems to have sprung to life only to liberate herself and take control of her own destiny. The absence of a sense of voyeurism desexualizes Sasaki’s images, allowing them to be read as playful rather than sexy naughty images. Lucas Samaras, who has made himself the subject of hundreds of staged photographs spanning a five decade career, has said, “When I say ‘I,’ more than one person stands up to be counted.”1 Questions of identity are natural when discussing self-directed images. Whether the final images be topographical studies of one’s own aging body, such as the work of the late artist John Coplans, or otherworldly, environmentally-conscious fantasies such as those of husband-wife team Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, or voyeuristic filmstills by Cindy Sherman, the challenge remains to distinguish between the artist’s expressed self versus the invented self. Sasaki places herself in her photographs as a neutral player of her own imagination. Referring to her image in the photographs in the third person, Sasaki distances herself from her creation. Sasaki the photographer is not Sasaki in the images, yet one gets the impression that they are the best of friends and collaborators. When Sasaki says ‘I,’ only one person stands, yet many others wave and cheer her on. Because she is creating a story, not writing a diary, Sasaki is able to direct her stage persona into weaving complex narratives from basic gestures. By wrapping whole novels into each of her images, Kanako Sasaki gives us a rich and poetic description of her imagination. Hannah Frieser Associate Director Light Work 1. Lucas Samaras, Samaras Album (New York: Whitney Museum/Pace Editions, 1971), 9.
Uniform, 2003 All images are pigmented inkjet prints ranging in size from 20 x 24" to 32 x 38"
Pond, 2003
Ambassador, 2005
Morning, 2003 10
Outcast, 2005 11
Afternoon #6, 2005 12
Afternoon #7, 2005 13
Dandelion Says Farewell, 2003
Backyard, 2003 16
Just Push Me into the Water so that I Can Float, 2005 17
Bathing, 2004
As a Soseki, in a Blackjacket, 2004
Get Cut, 2005 22
Viewing, 2003 23
Still Standing, 2003
As a Leaf, 2004
Bridging the Gap, 2005 28
Waiting Room, in Her Red Dress, 2004 29
Swing Club, 2003
Yellow Leotard, 2003
Fountain, 2005 34
Sunflower Rising, 2003 35
Teamwork, 2005 36
Get There, 2004 37
Mushroom Cut, 2005 38
Have You Seen the Rainbow?, 2005 39
Haiku Party, 2005
View from Here, Northeast, 2005
Afternoon #10, 2003 44
Afternoon #11, 2003 45
View from Here, West, 2005
Legs, 2003 48
Kanako Sasaki was born and raised in Sendai, Japan. She first explored facets of American life as a young girl when her family spent over a year in New Orleans. She later decided to dig deeper into the American experience by returning to the United States to attend undergraduate school at Ithaca College, followed by graduate studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Moving to a foreign country was a fundamental experience for Sasaki. While learning more about the new culture surrounding her, the experience also revived her curiosity about the culture she left behind in Japan. Questioning reality as the measurable standard before her eyes, she instead decided to trust her memory and imagination. She thus began weaving her narrative images in the Wanderlust series with inspiration from childhood memories, Japanese novels, and Ukiyo-e paintings. Creating a world where as she describes, “ordinary life becomes more extraordinary focused,� her images capture their own piece of Ukiyo, the concept of a floating world, where nothing in life is too small to notice and where a trivial gesture can epitomize the experience of a lifetime. Her work was recently exhibited at Hitotsubo-ten Gallery and Art Cocoon Gallery in Tokyo, and at the Visual Arts Gallery in New York City. Her photographs can be seen at www.kanakosasaki.com, and she recently launched a clothing line, featured on her second Web site, www.wanderlustful.com. Sasaki currently divides her time between Tokyo and New York City.
In this world everything is a source of interest. And yet just one step ahead lies darkness. So we should cast off all gloomy thoughts about our earthy lot and enjoy the pleasures of snow, moon, flowers and autumn leaves and drinking wine; living our lives like a gourd bobbing buoyantly downstream. This is the floating world. Asai Ryoi, Ukiyo Monogatari (Tales of the Floating World), 1661
(front cover) Outcast, 2005 (back cover) Higher, 2004