Richon, Olivier, 2018, Show, Exhibition or Event, Aka Yagara. After Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Abstract or Description: | In Praise of Shadows, written in 1933, is an essay on the Japanese interior by the writer Jun'ichirõ Tanizaki. Here the shadow is an aesthetic device that forms the view and also the taste. The visible becomes edible as much as the food is also a visual form. The interior is this dark room that is also reminiscent of the camera device of the Camera Obscura. The starting point of the work is a photograph of the kitchen of Villa Savoye (1931) built by Le Corbusier. A fish placed in the foreground offers a link between architecture and food. This image will be staged in the kitchen of a modest Soba restaurant in Kyoto. Oscillating between still life and document, this image is also a conversation between the clarity of the cuisine of Villa Savoye and the shadows of that of Kyoto. The clarity of an interior is problematic for Tanizaki, since the cleanliness of what can be seen only causes thoughts of what can not be seen. The dirty, however, becomes an aesthetic attribute when dirt, soot and the ravages of time produce surfaces that absorb light. This gives the interior a cold elegance. And in this case, if indeed the elegance is frigid, it can also be described as dirty, says Tanizaki. In some photographs, the paper is present as background; the gray paper that absorbs the light becomes a simple decoration that recalls some Japanese interiors. For Tanizaki, ‘Japanese paper gives a feeling of warmth, calm, and rest. Western paper rejects the light, while our paper seems to absorb it, wrap it gently, like the thin surface of a first snowfall’. |
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Subjects: | Creative Arts and Design > W600 Cinematics and Photography > W640 Photography | ||||||||
School or Centre: | School of Arts & Humanities | ||||||||
Funders: | supported by Tokyo Wonder Site Research Residency Programme | ||||||||
Date Deposited: | 23 Aug 2018 09:01 | ||||||||
Last Modified: | 28 Nov 2019 15:27 | ||||||||
URI: | https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/id/eprint/3606 |
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