Rika NOGUCHI – A Man and Some Birds

November 9, 2013 - January 18, 2014


After the "Color of the Planet" exhibition at DAAD Gallery in 2006, we are pleased to present Noguchi Rika in her third solo show in Berlin. Noguchi started photography in the early 1990s and quickly gained attention for her highly accomplished work. In our exhibition Noguchi shows the series "The Sun" (2005 – 2008), most recently exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and The National Art Center Tokyo along with "A Man and Some Birds" (2010) which lends its name to the exhibition.

In the series "The Sun" - most of the photographs has been taken in Berlin - the play with the light becomes the protagonist.

„Noguchi Rika used a commercially available pinhole camera to photograph the The Sun series. A pinhole camera does not require a lens and has the construction of a black box, or a camera obscura, which is the prototype of the modern camera. With a pinhole camera, light passes through a small hole that is less than 0.5mm and fixes the image onto the film. (...) In a large part of Noguchi´s photographs of the sun, there are two different kinds of images superimposed over one another - the image of things reflecting light and the trace of sunlight itself. Looking at the series of photographs, one is left with the feeling that the white sun is washing over the photographic paper and repeating itself in each of the images. [Like the way acid burns matter] it seems as though the sun is eating away the images. In a sense, the idea is almost anti-image.“ 

- Minami Yusuke, Chief Curator, The National Art Center, Tokyo

In " A Man and Some Birds" (2010) Noguchi captured the very special moment where the climbing cleaning worker is cleaning Berlin´s architectural highlight, the Tempodrom. 

Her photographs show tiny human figures, incidental details of people, going about their own business. On another plain from that on which the observer stands, they seem like birds or insects engaging in their instinctive behaviours. One of the vital elements in Noguchi´s perspective is that she tries to stand somewhere beyond the ends of the earth to photograph celestial bodies.

What also connects the two series, besides the remote perspective, is the mystical power that characterizes her work in general.

 

Noguchi Rika, born 1971 in Saitama, Japan, lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the Department of Photography, College of Art, at the Nihon University (Tokyo). Furthermore she participated in the fourth artist-in-residence program in Hinode-cho and stayed in New York with a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council. Solo shows include the Izu Photo Museum (Shizuoka), D´Amelio Terras (New York), Gallery Koyanagi (Tokyo). She has also participated in numerous group shows such as the Sharjah Biennial 8, Sharjah U.A.E., 55th Carnegie/International: Life on Mars, Carnegie Museum (Pittsburg) and the Yokohoma Triennale 2011 in Yokohoma. Moreover, Noguchi Rika participates with her series Rocket Hill (2001-2002) at the Entrepreneur 4.0 Award 2014.