New Arrival: Kazuhito Tanaka composes a view

“block #18″ by Kazuhito Tanaka

AZITO is pleased to introduce new artworks by Kazuhito Tanaka.

When I first saw Tanaka’s “blocks” series artworks, it looked like a hallucination. Hallucination of colorful buildings appeared in a white desert. As you may have noticed, these are colored toy blocks settled in a white space and photographed from the same eye level. Isn’t it interesting that human eyes can see the blocks as if they are large buildings? Tanaka’s artworks are like testing our senses of what we see and how we see it.

Tanaka uses photograph as a medium but it doesn’t sound accurate to call him as a photographer who captures one moment or objects in the scenery. He plans precisely how to photograph the image in a frame by deeply thinking what he wants to express through his works. In this “blocks” series, he was thinking of how to construct a scenery with minimal elements which are height, width and depth, and came up with the idea of using toy blocks. Simplifying the theme is always a core step of his work.

In the “Untitled Compositions” series, Tanaka went into an abolished school and scanned drawings students left on the wall in a classroom. He digitally reduced the resolution of the image in extremely low level and printed on a paper. Then he put them on a school desk to photograph it. Although it may look like a digitally manipulated artwork, simply stating, it is a photograph of papers. But what makes this works interesting is that he included the shadows of school windows in the work. You can see the gray shadows randomly appeared in the work.The drawings he used were created by somebody in the past but the shadows casting on the paper were captured right at the time he photographed. Times are crossing upon the work.

Moreover, I simply enjoy the color of his works too. They are bright and happy but soft and gentle at the same time. I could have a chance to talk with Tanaka and he was just exactly a person like that. He was sincerely explaining about his work and answering to my questions honestly with excitement. How is his works seen in your eyes?