GREEN ON THE MOUNTAIN
November 24, 2006 – January 28, 2007
Grafisches Kabinett
Midori Mitamura, Green On The Mountain, Secession 2006
Midori Mitamura’s artistic works occupy a position between photography and installation. They quote elements from the past, either her own or that of strangers, taking this as the point of departure from which to reveal modes of remembering and the reiterating memory of private biography. In a subtle and ironic way, Mitamura sounds out the tensions between individual experience and retrospectively lived history, without losing sight of the volatility and slipperiness of personal experience.
Midori Mitamura, Green On The Mountain, Secession 2006
Her installation Green On The Mountain in the Grafisches Kabinett at the Secession is based on a found photograph of a family outing to the mountains. Around this photograph, which has no personal significance for her and which shows people she does not know, Mitamura constructs a space within which she places staged photographs, music, and private memorabilia alongside the found material. The result is a space of the private present, of the here and now, which pushes into the background any thought of the photo archive from which the found photo may have come. Instead, the pictures turn into objects that suggest presence: the spines of books are printed with family snapshots and the hands of a clock tick against a dial made of an old black and white photograph.
Midori Mitamura, Green on the Mountain, 2003
Midori Mitamura attempts not only to install pictures in three-dimensions, but also to create three-dimensional images. In this way, she makes the transition from photography to other media. But in spite of this, photography cannot fulfill the wish to pluck the fixed moment out of the flow of time. The clock hands continue to move across the photo, and even a rotating mirror can only capture the picture on the wall as a still image, but not make it turn. Photography is not film is not life.
Midori Mitamura, Green on the Mountain, 2003
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Midori Mitamura and Andreas Spiegl.
Midori Mitamura, Green on the Mountain, 2003
MIDORI MITAMURA, born in 1964 in Aichi, lives and works in Tokyo.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION): 2006 Art & Breakfast, Raketa Studio, Stockholm; Message From Someone Living Far Away, Antique bookshop KOSHO ICHIRO, Tokyo; 2005 Green On the Mountain, Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki; Northern Photographic Center, Oulu; Photographic Center Peri, Turku; 2003 Inventions - Sunny flat days, Galerie ARTicle, Köln; 2002 Stories in two rooms, Room #1 New Siberia Cafe Nadiff, Tokyo; Room #2 Two o'clock afternoon at the hill, on the windy winter day, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo; 2001 LIFE - in the lake -Viewing Room, Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo; Where Memories Go, Gallery EBORAN, Salzburg; 2000 Inventions - Sunny flat days, Zeit Foto Salon, Tokyo; Where Memories Go, Keishin Nakaseko Space, Art Event Morph, Tokyo.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION): 2006 Kiss me just once more, Vienna International Apartment, Helsinki; 2005 Busan Biennale; 2004 Location of the Spirits, Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Moscow Contemporary Museum; On Happiness, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; Moving Japanese Interfacial Spaces, Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Video Art ScreeningTokyo, 8th NICAF Special Program Video Art Exhibition, Tokyo International Forum.
Midori Mitamura, Green on the Mountain, 2003
Installation shots: Pez Hejduk
In cooperation with “Monat der Fotografie“
The exhibition is supported by: Japan Foundation
The exhibitions are realized through support of:
Erste Bank – Partner of the Secession
Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur
Wien Kultur
Friends of the Secession
For
further information and photographic material please contact:
Urte Schmitt-Ulms
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at