Sohei Nishino
"Diorama Map"
18.05. – 01.07.2012
Sohei Nishino is one of the rising gems of contemporary Japanese photography. 3.14 presents the Diorama Map series, featuring many of Nishino’s most striking works including several maps of cities in Japan, but also of cultural metropolis like New York, London and his latest creation, the map of Berlin.
30 year old Nishino’s extraordinary photographic dioramas, monumental in size, map out the artist’s personal impressions of the world’s major cities in several thousand intimate details. Every single element amongst the enormous mound of pieces reflects his own act of the photographic process. Nishino’s collages are not precise geographic recreations, but an imperfect mix of landmarks and iconic features conceived from his personal ‘re-experiencing’ of a city. Nishino’s process began during a portfolio review when studying at Osaka University of Arts, when he realised he was far more interested in the mass of photographs not selected, than the few that were actually chosen to be displayed. For him, the whole selection was more of a true representation than the refined final edit of one photograph. This, together with his love of walking and the influence of 18th Century Japanese cartographer and surveyor Inō Tadataka, led to Nishino’s creation of the first diorama map of his hometown of Osaka.
When photographing for The Map of London, Nishino walked the entire city on foot for a month, wandering the streets and recording from every possible angle, from building tops to get an overview of the Gherkin, to shooting in step with the Queen’s Guard marching on the Mall. In total he used over 300 rolls of black and white film and took over 10,000 pictures. In the following three months Nishino selected some 4,000 of these photographs, hand printed in his own dark room, which he then meticulously pieced together with scissors and glue in his Tokyo studio. The result was an aerial view of London, which was then reshot as a completed collage to produce a final image in photographic form. This lengthy and painstaking process, all done by hand, only allows for the creation of about three maps per year. Nishino’s re-imagination of a city presents a convincing record despite its geographical inaccuracies, a map embodying the intricacies of a city through the eyes and recollection of an outsider.
In cooperation with Michael Hoppen Contemporary, London.
Sohei Nishino (b. 1982) in Hyogo, Japan. Currently lives and works in Kanagawa and Shizuoka Japan. The main exhibitions of recent years: 2012, OUT OF FOCUS: PHOTOGRAPHY (Saatchi Gallery, London), 2013, A Different Kind of Order (The ICP Triennial, New York), 2015, NEW DIORAMAS (Michael Hoppen Gallery, London) and more.
Sohei Nishino is the winner of 2018 Mast Foundation grant for Photography. The award supports research on the image of industry and work, giving voice to new generations of artists.
> 04.06.
Workshop with Sohei Nishino
Time of the workshop:
10:00 Introduction by Sohei Nishino to his work and/or view film of how he works
10:45 Assignment (handing out maps with zones)
11:00 Out to photograph
12:00 Printing of contact sheet at school
13:00 Lunch served at 3.14
13:30 Working on the Diorama Map collage
15:00 Finnish off and summing up
> 06.06.
Artist talk
Sohei Nishino presenting his work in the exhibition Diorama Map, and Tone Gellein making a preformative presentation of her work I BEG at 3.14.
Sohei Nishino
In connection with the exhibition Diorama Map, the artist Sohei Nishino, one of the rising gems of contemporary Japanese photography, will converse about his art with his London gallerist Tristan Lund from Michael Hoppen Contemporary. Nishino’s extraordinary photographic dioramas, monumental in size, map out the artist’s personal impressions of the world’s major cities in several thousand intimate details. Every single element amongst the enormous mound of pieces reflects his own act of the photographic process. Nishino’s collages are not precise geographic recreations, but an imperfect mix of landmarks and iconic features conceived from his personal ‘re-experiencing’ of a city.
3.14 presents many of Nishino’s most striking works including several maps of cities in Japan, but also of cultural metropolis like New York, London and his latest creation, the map of Berlin. The talk will be held in English and translation where needed will be by Nishino’s Tokyo gallerist Miho Odaka.
Tone Gellein
I BEG / Fragments from the second manuscript.
I BEG is a new project where text belonging to different contexts and genres is explored in a performative presentation using the lecture format as well as the actual space. The project will be developed in three stages: Text based, a reading. Sound based, the voice of the text. Visually based, the movement of the text in video. The text is created on six platforms: Terra Firma - Sight - Whole / Hole - Edge / Division - Rupture / Forehead - A letter / Endnote. The presentation here at 3,14, being the first stage of I BEG, will contain text fragments from A letter / Endnote and Terra Firma, and the platform Sight is developed as a response to Sohei Nishino’s work. Words from other platforms might still seep in and pass through these imagined borders. Gellein is interested in language and text in the context between forms of art, between the visual, the imaginary and real life. The reality of coincidence and how language creates the reality which is described. How to grasp reality through language and concepts and at the same time leave it and open it to be a focus in continuous movement?
> 21.06.
3.14 and VISP present:
Bruce Ferguson
NOT IN THE AGE OF THE PHARAOHS
Bruce Ferguson will investigate four examples of works of art prior to the revolution loosely known as the Arab Spring in Egypt to show how good art is symptomatic of political and societal issues and ills. The talk will include a wide variety of images from the revolution together with a discussion of the issues surrounding the contested word “revolution” as well as references to an Egyptian literature of discontent that preceded the four works by many decades as well as a discussion of the difference between works of art and representations per se. One of the works of art discussed was by an artist who was assassinated by police forces in Tahrir Square and who has become a forceful symbol of the martyrdom of many other courageous and creative people.
Bruce Ferguson is an arts leader with extensive experience in curatorial and entrepreneurial leadership, institutional development, with a demonstrated passion for facilitating artists and intellectuals with their research and works. He has a proven record of curatorial innovation and academic research on the subject of exhibition theory and practice. His early anthology edited with two other scholars entitled Thinking About Exhibitions was seminal in opening the field of curatorial studies. He articulated and advocated a vision for an international art biennial in a regional setting. Site Santa Fe now has a successful 15 year history. Ferguson has continued both to curate innovatively and continued to research curatorial and exhibition practicesand is actual in Bergen as member of Bergen Assembly’s International Advisory Board.