Noboyoshi Araki
Noboyoshi Araki
Tin Ashes, 2008
3218-BK
vol. 13 Nobuyoshi Araki photographs Michel Bulteau text Olivier Andreotti case The photographs belonging to Tin Ashes were taken in the early seventies. They represent crushed soda cans found in the streets of Tokyo and arranged as a tableau. The images remind us as much of New Realism as of Andy Warhol in their borrowing of the same ambiguous rapport to the icons of consumer society with that particular blend of fascination and critique. Araki’s “petchancola” have inspired Michel Bulteau to write six poems full of the spectre of death and the “practice of old witches or sorcerers”. For the poet, the cans represent funeral urns designed to carry ashes and bones. The poems, translated into Japanese, are printed as overprints with a two-coloured mesh, resulting in what resembles modular origami, some of which are assembled to form a decorative whole. The traycase takes its inspiration from the steep slopes that crown most buildings in Tokyo and its choice of material–painted plastic recalls contemporary Japanese architecture. Nobuyoshi Araki Artiste japonais né en 1940, Nobuyoshi Araki garde de son enfance le souvenir d’un Tokyo dévasté par les bombardements. Depuis plus de 30 ans, il observe et documente les mutations du Japon, dans une oeuvre particulièrement protéiforme, d’inspiration auto-biographique. Il est l’auteur de sa propre légende, son œuvre se développant à la façon d’un récit auto-biographique, hanté par la perte et la possession amoureuse. Michel Bulteau Michel Bulteau was 21 years old when he published Le Manifeste électrique (the Electric Manifesto). In 1972 he had the decisive encounter of meeting William Burroughs and Brion Gysin in London. He settled in New York in 1976 where he soon became part of the punk movement, joining the circle around Warhol and the Beat writers. His memories of New York infuse his book, New York est une fête, brought out by the French publishers, La Différence. After returning to Paris a certain dandyism and fin-de-siècle aesthetic, which has always hovered in the background, finds its full expression in a number of books: Minuties (La Différence, 1989), L’exilé de Venise, essai sur Corvo (Le Rocher, 1990), Le club des longues moustaches (Quai Voltaire, 1988). Description: Tokyo Triptych 3/3 6 original signed photographs (gelatin silver prints), mounted on cardboard Case made of painted plastic 46,8 x 42,7 x 5 cm Text in French and Japanese Limited edition of 40 copies November 2008 Graphic design: Olivier Andreotti
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Noboyoshi Araki
Shashin gekijo: Tokyo ereji (A Photo Theater: Tokyo Elegy), 1981
1774
Paperback with illustrated dust-jacket and bellyband. Text by Shunji Ito and Kazuo Nishii. 1045 photographs shot between 1967 and 1972. Conceived by Araki. Here we see, for the first time, the themes of violent sexual practices and, in particular, of bondage so often present in the artist's work. The book combines black and white and colour imagery, with close-ups and wide angle shots, interior and landscape, frequently laid out in mosaic form. Tokyo Ereji was not published until ten years after its conception and realisation (1964 - 1972).
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