Hiroyuki Masuyama in a Japanese artist that lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has been doing a wide variety of work since 1991 until now. His original training was oil painting, but the work I am going to focus on is on photographic media.
His new work is inspired on German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich, who did not paint in a realistic manner. Masuyama located places similar to the landscapes painted by the German painter back in the 19th century, and took thousands of photographs. The idea (as Friedrich's idea) is to use several elements to compose an idealistic site. He composted the images digitally to make a tribute to the painter. He finally resented the final work at the size of the actual paintings.
His photographs have a very painterly feel to them, they are aimed to pay special attention to the pictorial atmosphere. The concept fantasizes the ideas of time and space, present and future. By using the medium of photography, and the precess of assembling photographing elements Masuyama is making a reference to the passing of time. I think the images itself have a beautiful calm, and soft quality that plays back and forth along the fine line between two medium. The images seem to have a very painterly quality that is difficult to strip away from the photograph.
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ReplyDeleteIn many ways this work is "classically postmodern"; it references a reality once-removed and re-mediates it. A landscape that had been originally mediated by a painter. Yet we should still ask the question: why? Remediation has been going on for a very long time. What do you think the photographer adding, here?
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