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Michael Kenna: Hokkaido/New Work
Catherine Edelman Gallery
The art of China and Japan, when it came to the West, was a revelation: not every square inch of the picture need be filled with busy imagery; and in fact, an image can be even more powerfully suggestive when areas are left empty. Japanese art brought with it further stirrings of aesthetic impulse markedly different from those in the West. The Japanese hallmarks of beauty in both art and objects incorporated the beliefs of Zen Buddhism, which entered Japan in the twelfth century AD and had a widespread impact on the culture. Qualities such the stripping-away of unnecessary elements, the requirement that an image yield its full beauty only after thought, use and contemplation were expressive of Zen ideals of enlightenment and the seeking of truth. Hallmarks of beauty in both art and objects included seven primary qualities: simplicity; asymmetry; naturalness; tranquility; non-attachment, the artist's autonomy in rising above the rules once he has mastered them; profundity, that the image or article not reveal all its qualities at once; and astringency, or presenting the concentrated essence of the subject. Following such aesthetics in sumi-e, the traditional, often meditative ink painting of Japan, a single ink-stroke trailed behind the brush's flexible tip can raise from a sheet of blank paper a bird, a gnarled branch, an image with a realm of meaning. In Michael Kenna: Hokkaido/New Work, Michael Kenna's black-and-white photographs of trees, fence posts, lonely docks, and other objects isolated in the snowy expanses of Japan's most austere island show that a skilled photographer can express such aesthetics in the realm of the photographic print. One would hardly expect photography to do so. By its nature it seems too bound to the visual authority of three dimensions and the Western perception of perspective, too constrained to realism to render the austere imagery associated with Zen Buddhism, in particular the concept of 'blankness' or 'non-image' -- the idea that the untouched portions of the work are as meaningful as those with line and contour. When an artist makes sumi-e, the paper before he begins is bare, ready for any mark he may make to secure the meaning of the moment or emotion he wishes to express. A photographer, on the other hand, begins with pre-existing visual fact. The camera is a mechanism, reproducing whatever reality lies in the field of view before it. Where an artist can edit through gesture, can add (but not subtract) with additional touches here and there, the photographer must edit via selection. The reality is already present. The photographer can only frame. Within such restraints, Kenna reveals himself as both disciplined photographer, and Westerner adeptly exploring aesthetics and moods of traditional Japan. Photographing in remote Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, the artist uses the vast expanses of snow and the gray, evenly tonal skies of a region of extreme winter weather as non-image, as the active, if barren, background of a selection of curious natural, and occasionally man-made, features. In Twenty One Fence Posts, Shirogane, Hokkaido, Japan (2005) the snowy rise shows itself as merely a long horizontal border against the slightly dimmer clouded sky, like a landscape created by a wash of light ink, skillfully harmonized in subtle shades. A row of fence posts defines the image, mere upright strokes, their short dark verticals revealing the contour of the hill that otherwise hidden lies beneath them. The diminishing size of the posts suggests further movement, not only surmounting the swell of the hill but disappearing into a distance unseen. This is a spartan image, the twenty-one fence posts literally the only objects within, but as with many of these images, austerity and profound isolation are counterbalanced with a deep-welling delight. It is a glimpse of the truth of uncluttered things. In other images, Kenna's editing and selection sidesteps the camera's expected fidelity to Western planar perspective. Traditional Western perspective was the innovation of the Renaissance artists, and the convention in art's illusion that all details are drawn evenly backward toward a single, distant vanishing point was a dominating force in art for the next 500 years. Oriental art developed along different lines, using lightness to indicate faraway elements, in the same way in which, staring into deep water, objects become indistinct the further they are from the surface: an evocation of depth, not distance, but a consistent convention and one which works. One might presume photographs with their apparent fidelity to visual reality to be most strict in maintaining the Western illusion of how the 'real' world looks. But images such as Lijiang River, Study 4, Guilin, China (2006) and other, less compositions such as the dramatic dock in Stark Outlook, Kucharo Lake, Hokkaido, Japan (2004) or the baffling, yet satisfying masses of dark and light in Winter Seascape, Wakkanai, Hokkaido, Japan (2004), show that a skilled photographer need not be bound by such limitations. Mountains rise vaporous in the distance in Lijiang River, Study 4, Guilin, China, while dark tonality plants rocks and hills firmly in the foreground in a composition that recalls some of the classic works of Chinese and Japanese brush-painting artists. In further images the photographer reveals his ability to compass the large contour as well as the small detail. Capturing the large contour is seen in the unexpected reversal of dark and light in Ice Floe, Cape Hinode, Hokkaido, Japan (2005), and the mighty upward sweep of the snowbound pines in Forest Edge, Hokuto, Hokkaido, Japan (2004). With a far tighter focus, Field of Snow, Biei, Hokkaido, Japan (2004) and Flowers in Winter, Sanai, Hokkaido, Japan (2004) select a single, salient detail, isolating their elements on a featureless ground of white. Here perspective is discarded entirely, for there is nothing against which to measure the tree or flower-stems, which receive all the more attention to their fragile framework in the bare, snowed expanse. Practices of traditional Japan such as the tea ceremony and the ink painting techniques of sumi-e were not only art, but meditative disciplines. To this canon Michael Kenna has added the possibility of photography. An artist may edit directly from his imagination; the photographer must frame what is. The Hokkaido photographs of this established photographer reflect a discipline and austerity as fulfilling as they are sparely elegant. Further selections of new photographs from China, India and Korea are also included in this exhibition. Michael Kenna: Hokkaido/New Work is on exhibit at Catherine Edelman Gallery through October 28, 2006. The images in Michael Kenna: Hokkaido/New Work are also featured in a new book, Hokkaido (Nazraeli: August 2006), his second book on Japan; the first is Japan (Nazraeli: March 2003). Michael Kenna has had more than twenty books published on his photography, including Michael Kenna: A 20 Year Retrospective (Nazraeli: 3rd ed., March 2003), Ratcliffe Power Station (Nazraeli: Nov 2004), and Le Notre's Gardens (RAM Publications: 2nd ed., June 1999). --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.
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