Fertile and Meditating, Translucent Sphere of Rinko KAWAUCHI

Rinko KAWAUCHI  "M/E On this sphere Endlessly interlinking"

venue: Shiga prefectural museum
until Mar 26. 2023
With English caption

Rinko KAWAUCHI, one of Japan’s well-known female photographers, is now holding the largest exhibition in her career at the Shiga prefectural museum. Her photographs are characterized by subtle lighting and transparent color. She captures various motifs ranging from spectacular nature such as a geyser in Iceland to familiar objects found in the environment around us such as garden plants or curtains in a room.

The exhibition consists of nine sections designed to allow viewers to indulge themselves in her perspective in various ways. Some examples are a movie projected on a floor, an outdoor exhibition, and a decollation booth covered with white lace. This tells us that she also attempted to let the audience to percept other than the pictures themselves.

She has ever traveled around the world to capture bold and mysterious features of nature. She also respects the weakness and fragility of living things including humans. Her practice seems to be led by a sort of spiritual quest than by artistic motivation. She has been observing something invisible, shooting and facing the resulting work. Then, her quest starts again.

KAWAUCHI wrote in a statement:
Some things can only be obtained through moving my body to face my photographic subject head-on.

This exhibition is titled "M/E On this sphere Endlessly interlinking. " M/E stands for mother or me / earth.
Personally, I have found it easy, if not unfair that female artists emphasize motherhood to make their works epic.
But after witnessing her exploration for as long as thirty years, I  can't help admiring that she carried one belief; all phenomena and all life are connected in one sphere. This epic vision was definitely born from the female artist.