The First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

JAPAN TOKIHIRO SATOH Breath-graph no. 155 1992 Gelatin silver photograph 242x291cm Collection: The artist Tokihiro Satoh was born in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan in 1957 and completed a postgraduate course at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1983. The artist's solo exhibitions have been held in Tokyo at Tokiwa Gallery, 1982; Gallery Surge, 1991; and Gallery Hosomi, 1992. The first group exhibition in which hE;J participated was the '15th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan', Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 1981. Other group exhibitions include 'Joint Exhibition Australia and Japan', Gallery Lunami, Tokyo, 1990; 'Japanese Contemporary Photography - Twelve Viewpoints', Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Pavillion des Arts, Paris, France, 1990; ' Simultaneita', Museo di Roma Palazzo Braschi, Rome, Italy, 1991; 'Make-believe', The Photographers' Gallery, London, England, 1991; and 'New Space of Photography', Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland, 1991. Recently, he participated in 'Photography in Contemporary Art', Walker 76 Hill Art Center, Seoul, South Korea, 1992 and 'The Photographic Horizon of Korea', Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, South Korea, 1992. The work ofTokihiro Satoh is represented in the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane and in several public collections in Japan includ- ing the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and lwaki Municipal Art Museum. Tokihiro Satoh says that he began to feel attached to 'light' while studying sculpture which is a continual process of filling space with volume. In 1986, he exhibited a three- dimensional work combined with the use of light. Since 1988 he has concentrated on photographs - impressions of light - as a means of expression. Tokihiro Satoh explores the theme of light in space. He has developed a method in which he sets a camera in an everyday landscape and moves around holding a small torch or mirror. Thus, after a long exposure, the camera records only the landscape, wh ich is completely still, and the detached tracks of light in it. When confronting Tokihiro Satoh's work the viewer cannot help but be aware of the artist's existence behind every line or every dot of the light- standing in a busy thorough- fare of Tokyo, in a construction site, near an abandoned house in Hokkaido, or in a river. Satoh lets light into the camera, precisely calculating the time, while taking care not to let his fingers appear in the photograph.The lines and dots of light are tracks of his body and, as a whole, they form the artist's self- portrait, a proof that 'I was there'. In addition, the long exposure allows the photograph, which was originally devised to record the moment, to express time that is condensed within space. The title 'Breath-graph' implies the breath of the limited space which the artist has taken out of context, as well as his own bated breath while creating the tracks of light. The space, frozen in the photograph, may be barely breath ing after its life force has been violently changed. Tokihiro Satoh calls his simple method of using light and time 'anachronistic'. But his works seem to be both a daring challenge to the issues of photography today and a clear response to them. Takeshi Kanazawa