YUTAKA NOZAWA

Artist bio

≠ -not equal
May 21 - June 18, 2017
Opening reception: Sunday, May 21, 2-6pm

YUTAKA NOZAWA　≠ Bird 3　2017, gelatin silver print, acrylic mounting, 13×18cm

KAYOKOYUKI is pleased to announce the solo exhibition with Yutaka Nozawa. He was born in 1983 in Shizuoka, Japan.
Recently, Nozawa presented his work in "≠" at KAYOKOYUKI, Tokyo, 2017, "L" at UTRECHT, Tokyo, 2015, "→■←" at Intercambiador ACART, Madrid, 2014, "Triunfo y poesía..." International Exhibition of experimental Video at Galería Santa fe- La Decanatura, Columbia, 2014, "musubijutsu" at Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka, 2013, "Work Shop:一　く　w　八　L　ニ" at Shizuoka Prefectural Museum, Shizuoka, 2015, "PORTFOLIO DAYS & NIGHT - A Place for Contemporary Photography" at Centre national de l’ audiovisuel (CNA), Luxembourg, 2014. Lives and works in Shizuoka.
http://www.yutakanozawa.com/

The artwork of Yutaka Nozawa stages unique, humorous scenes by adding a subtle touch to ordinary scenes which are easily overlooked. His artwork creates a minimal space where personal sense of time is mystified by evoking the fragments of one’s far distant familiar memories through video which is also the record of the artist’s own memory. Nozawa’s artwork is strewn with small, minor surprises such as when one happens to look at a clock and notices it pointing to 12:34. The experience of surprise suggests the possibility of the viewer spontaneously discovering a variety of different rules within his artwork. These discoveries sometimes surpass the artist’s intention and are connected to individual memories touched through the artwork.

The title of this exhibition “≠ (not equal)” is not only inspired by the image of “≠ Bird 3”(2017, gelatin silver print, acrylic mounting, 13×18cm), one of the exhibited works, but also it symbolizes the Nozawa’s overall artwork. In his artwork, same motifs are employed in a repetitive manner. For example, the acrylic plate as a frame, and the lines of an acrylic plate within a photographic artwork, are different but part of the same existence; therefore, it is now difficult to recognize the acrylic frame simply as a frame for the artwork. Likewise, in the artwork “cloth”(2014, video, cloth 10min 25sec, resizable), the motif itself serves as a screen on which the video artwork is projected. Through a complicated arrangement of elements such as two-dimensional expression based on a record of reality, three-dimensional installation space, and manipulation of flow of time, Nozawa’s artwork blurs the borderline among artwork/space/viewer and invites us to a world deviating a little from the ordinary.

Nozawa says that he wants the viewer to “wander back and forth.” He designs a simple, ingenuous stage within which neither narratives nor allegories are contained. However, one step into his playful exhibition space, and a viewer’s thinking pauses temporarily and wanders in the air. By wandering back and forth between reality and fiction through the place staged by Nozawa, we may notice that our eyes towards our daily lives are updated spontaneously.