Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum in Nagaizumi-cho, Shizuoka
Closes in 27 days
Taiji Matsue's work challenges the established notion that photography produces two-dimensional images with a sense of three dimensionality and depicts a subject the way people think they see it. Matsue's aerial landscapes, taken at locations around the world, are so flat and depthless as to be more like serene, abstract paintings than photographs.
Matsue, who studied geography at the University of Tokyo, must love the surface of the Earth as "surface," because he typically cuts out the horizon, as well as shade and shadow, from his pictures. As a result, his images -- no matter whether they are of mountains, city streets or buildings bunched closely together -- are fully lacking in depth. This extreme flatness and his sharp focus brings out intense contrasts and accentuates exquisite details such as the fine lines etched on the textured surface of a mountain or the leaves on trees in a forest -- the kinds of details that are so minute they escape the naked eye.
While he has long been known for uniquely quiet, black-and-white photographs, the stars of the Vangi exhibition are Matsue's latest series of colored aerial pictures showing a river mouth, tea gardens and an airport.
