Dates: Oct 3 – Nov 1, 2003

I was a kid, playing in an imaginary world. There were oceans and hills. I had my own horse. But in reality, that place was a tiny garden. My horse was a rock upon which I could ride. Now, I’ve gotten into the word ‘garden’. Reading any prose about gardens causes me to imagine something else. Like such enjoyable times, I’ve now thought to make my own garden.
-Yuki Kimura

For Kimura, image and reality are homogeneous in terms of their precariousness and their strange and delicate vibration, rather than their lack of a sense of reality. -Mizutani Mitsuru

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to present New Garden – artist Yuki Kimura’s first exhibition in Japan since comleting a one year residency in the United States (in both Los Angeles and New York). Previously, the artist’s work was exhibited internationaly in Paris, Istanbul, the Netherlands, and the United States. Kimura will be included in the upcoming Mori Art Museum exhibition, Roppongi Crossing, in February, 2004. New Garden, comprised of 5 large scale color photographs and 2 computer generated movies, represents a recent shift in focus for the artist. In past works Kimura maintained a calculated distance -gently, yet insistently questioning the nature of the mediated image. The artist’s present body of work utilizes familiar conceptual strategy to exploit rather than expose ambiguity inherent in the photographic image. The images on view in New Garden serve to provide the gallery visitor with a point of entry into an imaginary landscape – one whose origin is equal parts personal and literary. Kimura’s installation includes appropriated, digitally altered images as well as a series of inverted, scenes from nature. The installation draws upon the power of a collective nostalgia and trust in the truth of photographic representation to lure viewers into the artist’s personal fantasy.

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