Christophe Guye Galerie presents a selection of works by four different artists – Jun Ahn, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Rinko Kawauchi and Risaku Suzuki – that tell stories about life and human beings in different and very personal ways.
Jun Ahn (*1981, South Korea) gained recognition on the international scene with a series of self-portraits made on the top of skyscrapers and that depict the artist leaning over the side of a building or leaping up onto its edge. For Jun Ahn the elimination of context is the most fascinating aspect of a photographic image. Photography is reality and fantasy, truth and fiction, all at the same time. She wants to discover the invisible moment, the invisible structure and hidden beauty of a world that only can be seen through the lenses of a camera. Ahn’s photographic works describe our everyday life as situated on the border between an illusion and reality. That is why her body and view dangerously stand on the edge. She hones the knife of nervousness, of the moment.
Karla Hiraldo Voleau (*1992) is a French-Dominican artist. Hiraldo Voleau combines performance and photography, using images and text to create personal and narrative series. Often, she becomes the main character in her series, aiming to explore the boundaries of human interactions, love, sexuality, friendship, social groups. Her goal is to discover the intersection and point of tension between ‘real life’ and art. Initially, she delved into deconstructing stereotypes surrounding Dominican and Latino men. In her recent works, she focused on exploring gender and its visual representations, incorporating more performance art, evident in projects like ‘A Man in Public Space’ or her latest series, ‘Another Love Story’, which was inspired by a real-life heartbrake. All of these portraits and visual experiments contribute to her broader exploration of the female gaze.
Rinko Kawauchi (*1972, Japan), who won international acclaim through her photobooks, observes nature. Inspired by Shinto, a Japanese religion devoted to the sacred essence of nature, she considers that no subject is too brief or ordinary to not be photographed. Rinko Kawauchi photographs everyday moments, nature that surrounds her. She depicts little things and the result is always very poetic in the way colors and shapes interact. Her subjects can be ephemeral but somehow they determine the fragility of existence. Rinko Kawauchi harmonious images are often shown in groups or sequence as if she composes music. With an approach to reality in the smallest details – most of them often unnoticed, her photographs have often been described as visual haikus.
Risaku Suzuki (*1963, Japan) began using photography as medium for his creative output after graduating from Tokyo College of Photography in 1987. Today he is one of Japan's most renowned photographers. Suzuki has been photographing snowscapes since 2004. His sense of sight gained by going into frigid, snowy mountains with a large format camera every year to keep facing the white world beyond control of men, takes us away to nowhere, a place farther from snowy mountains and makes us float in the clear light and the tense air. As the title ‘White’ suggests, questioning the ‘whiteness’ is to question the physicality that brings photography into existence, such as paper, light sensitivity, emulsion and frame, as well as the metaphysics of photography such as light, colors and outline.
Please join us for the book signing at our booth:
Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Saturday, 13 April 2024, 4–5 p.m.
