Seen: Umegaoka Lovers’ Suicide   梅ヶ丘心中Who: Nobuyoshi Araki  荒木経惟Where: Art

Seen: Umegaoka Lovers’ Suicide   梅ヶ丘心中

Who: Nobuyoshi Araki  荒木経惟

Where:Art Space AM, Harajuku (map)

When:October 11  - December 12, 2021 (Open 1-7pm.  Closed Mondays, Tuesdays)

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2021 at Art Space AM:

1 January - March: Rakuen楽園

2 April - June:  Haru Kareru  春枯れる (Withering Spring)

3 July - September: July 7th  七月七日

4 October - December: Umegaoka Lovers’ Suicide   梅ヶ丘心中

The scope of Araki’s prolific existence is staggeringly vast- I think it’s too large and too varied and too moving and too messy to fit the tiny, glowing rectangles that we filter the world though with now.  Art Space AM however, a cavernous room tucked away in a nondescript building on a Harajuku backstreet, is a perfect vessel for his output. 

The gallery’s owner & curator, Hisako Motoo, is somehow able to steer this stream of photography along, continually facilitating installations of Araki’s latest work since 2014. Her insight into his pictures- not to mention her masterful edits comprising several hundred of his Polaroids at a time- create such experiences that I always get an inexplicable nervous sensation as I make my way up the stairs to the gallery to see the latest exhibition. Upon entering I’ve always found myself moved, and never disappointed. 

Combined, the four shows listed above cover 67% of all of 2021. They have seperate titles but they’re of a phase in a long, vivid, and improbably profuse life of photography.  At 81, I’m told health and the pandemic mostly keep Araki at home. Raucous Shinjuku nightlife has been replaced by pills and an early bedtime. Gone are any of the sorts of pictures he’s known for- indeed, aside from two commissioned series for magazines, there haven’t been many new photographs of actual humans for some time.  Araki’s physical subjects have stopped down to flowers, figures & dolls, and the sky.  With these objects- and the raw beauty of Polaroid’s latest batches of instant film- he makes work that, on its own terms (his), is compelling in mood. The images are vivid, but are weighted by a strange darkness, a blanket of thanatos is descending-  yet sparks of his cheeky humor abound.