At a time when popular culture is fed both mesmerizing and disturbing imagery, it often carries with it a sense of terror, while alluding to the possibility of something disturbingly sublime. What makes that something "sublime," however, evades easy definition.
"Expanded Retina #2" at g3 Gallery (Tolot/Heuristic Shinonome) explores this contradiction and more, with an installation of film, photography and ephemera that stutters between being uncomfortable, unsettling and strikingly captivating.
In the woods surrounding Mount Fuji, Daisuke Yokota and Kazuo Yoshida, members of the artist group MP1, photograph each other at night with only flashguns providing illumination. They capture the outlines of each other's bodies and the close proximity of their alpine landscape. For MP1, the tension between terror (of photographic realism) and the sublime (the artists' experience and impression) is what makes "Expanded Retina #2" so provocative.
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