Noritoshi Hirakawa

The Returning of the Sun

November 20 – December 22, 2010
Los Angeles

Opening reception: Saturday, November 20, 6–8pm

Blum & Poe is pleased to present The Returning of the Sun, a new three-channel video installation by New York-based artist Noritoshi Hirakawa.

Hirakawa believes that human activity shapes the culture in which we live. His work in performance, photography, and film is widely recognized for unveiling problematic social structures. Within this framework, Hirakawa proposes to extend the boundaries of perception, thus altering aesthetic views for the future.

The Returning of the Sun is a study of the process of sublimation from darkness (dusk) into light (sunrise) using the Japanese concept of Iki-Ryo. Iki-Ryo is an apparition of the soul of a living person, able to haunt or embody another person. In this story, two young women make an emotional claim to one man. While one woman is clearly in the present, the other (the Iki-Ryo) mysteriously haunts and exists the present although she is from the past. Their ultimate confrontation is resolved in an emotionally charged dance piece choreographed by Karole Armitage, the punk ballerina trained by Balanchine and Cunningham, and director of her own company, Armitage, Gone! Dance.

Also on view in this exhibition is Heat Stroke, the second installment in a series of slide projections entitled Streams By The Wind. This story of father and daughter consists of 80 images viewed in a narrative progression without sound on a slide carousel. Each installment of Streams By The Wind features an interaction between a man and a woman. These characters possess conflicting traits and elude any customary definition of good or evil. Hirakawa’s aim in this series is to compose narratives that deviate from modern film and literature and to create multidimensional characters that react to their circumstances, unfettered by predetermined dispositions.

Noritoshi Hirakawa was born in 1960 in Fukuoka, Japan. Recent solo shows include Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei (2009), Nanzuka Underground, Tokyo (2008), Baukunst Galerie, Cologne (2006), Salon 94, New York (2006), Wrong Gallery, London (Frieze Art Fair 2004), Deitch Projects, New York (1997), and Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (1995) with group shows including Silence in the Light, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Darkside, Fotomuseum Winterthur, An Attribute of Living, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp (all 2008), FLASH CUBE, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2007), Into Me / Out of Me, P.S.1, New York, Dark Places, Santa Monica Museum of Art, (both 2006), The History of Japanese Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, False Innocence, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona (both 2003)

Cold Burn, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo (2000), and Feminin, Masculin, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1995).

His work is included in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Frac’s Regional Contemporary Art Collections, Nantes, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Yokohama Museum of Art, SMAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, and Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt.

Selected Works

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BLUM Tokyo is closed for installation until Saturday, March 23.