Izima Kaoru, 'One Sun' - New Yorker Review

Izima Kaoru

Though he is known for the big, staged photographs he calls "Landscapes with a Corpse"—multiple views of fashionably dressed young women playing dead—in this show, Kaoru explores his own fear of death in a series of images of the sun. Leaving his camera's shutter open from dawn until dusk, he records the orbit of the sun across the sky as a bright, sputtering line, like a lit fuse or a live wire. A fish-eye lens renders this three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view as a perfect circle, with the horizon of various locations (Kenya, Tokyo, Hawaii) the dark edge around a pale-blue bowl. Although the work seems destined for yoga retreats and meditation rooms, the pictures' positive charge is hard to resist. Through Oct. 9.
 

New Yorker

Marco Breuer commenting on his recent exhibition at the MIA

New Pictures 2: Marco Breuer

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Izima Kaoru, One Sun - Time Out Critics' Pick

 

 

Best in Photography 

Izima Kaoru, "One Sun"

"The Japanese artist, in the process of tracking and measuring the fine balance between hope and an awareness of mortality, turned his attention to the daily, arcing path of the sun. These round photographs, taken with a fish-eye lens, are both beautiful and meditative"

Read more @ TimeOut

New Work by Japanese Photographer Izima Kaoru - Review @ ArtDaily

Izima Kaoru, Nanyuki, Kenya (One Sun), 2007. C-print with acrylic diasec, 47 inch diameter.

"After fifteen years of exploring the macabre in his ongoing series Landscapes with a Corpse, Izima Kaoru looked to spirituality to ease his fear of death. Dissatisfied with what organized religion had to offer, he found his comfort in the natural world. The sun and its constancy in our existence proved to be his solace and inspiration.

Traveling the world, Kaoru tracked the path of the sun from sunrise to sunset on a single day in a given location. Using a fisheye lens and long exposure, he left his shutter open from dawn to dusk, capturing 360 degree views of the sun's progress as it made its way across the sky. The large-scale photographs in Izima Kaoru's new series are unusual in format. They are cut round and embedded in a circular frame, echoing the celestial orb for which the series One Sun is named. Each photograph features a single illuminated line against a wash of cerulean blue. The line is repeated from one photograph to the next, albeit in various forms, the sun altering its path depending on locale and season. It curves and bends, nearly forming a full circle in Norway at the poles; it is a wide reaching arc in Hawaii, a mere sliver of a crescent during Tokyo's winter solstice. In Kenya, at the equator, a single vertical line of the sun dissects the rounded photograph into halves.

First impression is of bold, graphic imagery, teetering on the edge of abstraction. Yet when one goes in for a closer look, recognizable clues—a volleyball net, cityscape, trees—cling to the edges of most circles, reminding us these are indeed photographs."

Read moer @ artdaily.org

Izima Kaoru, One Sun - DLK Collection Review

"Japanese photographer Izima Kaoru is perhaps best known for his series of cinematic images where models imagine their own ideal deaths, complete with dramatic locations, fabulous couture fashions, and elegant pools of blood. After more than a decade of staged death, his new body of work, entitled One Sun, is a radical departure from this morbid fascination, a life-affirming look skyward.

Using a fish-eye lens and day-long exposures, Kaoru's images trace the path of the sun across the sky, resulting in images of sparkling bright lines against light blue orbs of hazy color. Depending on his location (near the Equator, in the northern Norway, or at various other locations around the globe) and the time of year/season, the sun creates a variety of concave and convex arcs, straight lines and even perfect circles, with cloudy weather periodically adding a dashed effect. These beams of light parade across a spectrum of soft blue, light purple and fuzzy pink pastel backgrounds, with only a few silhouetted palm tress, buildings, or other minuscule points of landscape around the edges to provide local context. They are like big blue marbles, or vibrating discs, or portholes.

...

Overall, while we have seen variations on these ideas before, Kaoru has added some new twists to the tracking of the sun, creating contemporary photographs that pulsate with collective optimism. He reminds us that wherever we might be on this diverse planet, the sun puts on a spectacular show if we would only take the time to look up and notice."

Read full review @ DLK COLLECTION

IZIMA KAORU | ONE SUN - Installation shots

DAVID MAISEL | LIBRARY OF DUST, Studio 360 Interview

Library of Dust

For over twenty years the Oregon State Psychiatric Hospital stored the cremated remains of patients in copper containers. Photographer David Maisel found them, and shows the beautiful — and bizarre — chemical reactions that took place as the canisters corroded in his exhibit "Library of Dust," currently at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside. Produced by Sarah Lilley.

IZIMA KAORU | ONE SUN - Opening & Reception

From left to right: Nanyuki, Kenya, 2007, C-print with acrylic diasec, 47 inch diameter; Nordkapp, Norway #2, 2007, C-print with acrylic diasec, 47 inch diameter

Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to announce One Sun, an exhibition of new work by Japanese photographer Izima Kaoru.

Sept 1—Oct 9, 2010 

Opening Reception Wednesday Sept 8, 6—8 PM

After fifteen years of exploring the macabre in his ongoing series Landscapes with a Corpse, Izima Kaoru looked to spirituality to ease his fear of death. Dissatisfied with what organized religion had to offer, he found his comfort in the natural world. The sun and its constancy in our existence proved to be his solace and inspiration.

Traveling the world, Kaoru tracked the path of the sun from sunrise to sunset on a single day in a given location. Using a fisheye lens and long exposure, he left his shutter open from dawn to dusk, capturing 360 degree views of the sun's progress as it made its way across the sky.

The large-scale photographs in Izima Kaoru's new series are unusual in format. They are cut round and embedded in a circular frame, echoing the celestial orb for which the series One Sun is named. Each photograph features a single illuminated line against a wash of cerulean blue. The line is repeated from one photograph to the next, albeit in various forms, the sun altering its path depending on locale and season. It curves and bends, nearly forming a full circle in Norway at the poles; it is a wide reaching arc in Hawaii, a mere sliver of a crescent during Tokyo's winter solstice. In Kenya, at the equator, a single vertical line of the sun dissects the rounded photograph into halves.

First impression is of bold, graphic imagery, teetering on the edge of abstraction. Yet when one goes in for a closer look, recognizable clues—a volleyball net, cityscape, trees—cling to the edges of most circles, reminding us these are indeed photographs.

Izima Kaoru has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and is represented in numerous public and private collections internationally. This is his sixth solo exhibition with Von Lintel Gallery. The artist lives and works in Tokyo.