Vacant space is the subject -- and the content. Chie Yasuda's exhibition at Taro Nasu Gallery is a pallid, melancholic affair of photographs of empty, vacant spaces. Quite clearly some of these places -- the three largest photographs were taken inside the desolate, tiled interior of a ruin flooded with water somewhere in Portugal -- have been vacant for quite some time. These ghostly pale shots are beautiful in the lonely way that all photographs of deserted ruins are, and therefore are instantly picturesque by sheer virtue of the romantic setting. The grass growing through faded tiles is certainly pretty, and it is easy to imagine sad, wispy spirits wafting through the watery air.
"Air" is the operative word, since this photographer is interested in portraying aspects of air, not light -- albeit the photographs are in fact drenched in light, which bleaches out that space and makes everything appear to be floating. In a weak attempt to invent a new photographic language the "light" turns into "air," but it is actually the light that bleeds out image and color.
It is just, unfortunately, a tad unexciting and not so removed from tourist-with-a-sensibility snapshots taken with a good camera. Coming from an artist, we are expected to sigh and ponder nature taking over man-made structures, temporality, emptiness, desolation -- or even boredom.