MIYAKO YOSHINAGA is pleased to participate in ZONAMACO 2020 in Mexico City for the first time. Its booth features recent works by two contemporary artists who question the future of our natural environment. While their styles contrast dramatically, they both share a process involving many stages of labor-intensive experiments in order to achieve their final goal.
Yojiro IMASAKA (b. 1983) employs a classic 8 x 10 camera in densely vegetated woodlands, spending hours observing subtle changes in the primeval scenery. After days of monitoring climate variations, he captures highly-detailed images of a universal landscape on a large format negative. Then, in the darkroom, he performs delicate toning and other alterations that create a distinctive custom hue. Like an Impressionist, Imasaka’s work reinterprets nature, extracting a final glow from its increasingly eroded state.
Dominique PAUL (b. 1967) creates an intricate collage using magazine cutouts overlaid on 17th-century “age of discovery” engravings of botanical studies. The resulting fragments of human muscle and industrial commodities entangle and unite with flowers, stems, and insects in metamorphoses in the background. Paul then photographs the whole with light refracted through a disposable plastic bottle. The result is a hybrid mandala that critically reflects a human-centric society relentlessly consuming its limited natural resources.
Thousands of years of evolving nature compromised by the progressive pace of human activity are our artists’ inspiration and concerns. Imasaka and Paul’s aesthetically and technically dissimilar works nevertheless interweave and create a dialogue with each other.
Yojiro IMASAKA is from Hiroshima, Japan, and he lives and works in New York, USA. His work is in the permanent collection of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art and Mead Art Museum, all in USA.
Dominique PAUL is a native of Montreal, Canada, and works both in Canada and USA. She holds Ph.D. from University of Quebec and won numerous awards and merits from various Canadian organizations. Last year she published a critical study of photography, ENTRE CHAIR ET LUMIÈRE De la possibilité d'une distance critique par l'objet-image (BETWEEN FLESH AND LIGHT: The possibility of a critical distance by the object-image).
