[About the series “DESSIN”]
“DESSIN” is a series photographed by one push of the shutter without any digital manipulation. The artist aimed to capture his instinctive impression of seeing the natural landscape—including the wind and the atmosphere—with his camera, like when a painter draws a dessin. The artist explains the abstract structures in the photographs are “a collection of lines.”
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[Artist Statement]
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
——Marcel Proust
I stand within the majestic nature. I am embraced with the unbelievable colors created by the sunlight, below the endlessly alternating cloud and sky. My heart and mind reaches an upwelling state, and comes together as part of the nature at such moment. Yet, I cannot fixate the indescribable experience. That is why I cut the landscape spreading in front of me within a rectangular frame.
It is said that it was much later in history that humans began noticing and started to pay attention to the “landscape.” Starting from the mind of “cosmos” that embraces all creatures, we developed our self-consciousness, and transformed it into the mind of “landscape” which is surrounding but also connected with us. A landscape is not only an expansion of land that spreads in front of us, but also a partial of the nature that our self-consciousness creates, and would reflect the mood, the feeling, the state of mind of a person. In the 17th century, artists who painted landscapes as they visit places started drawing (dessin) at the site, and described their “impressions” of when they encountered the nature that spread in front at the moment.
As I could not express the time and experience I spent there embraced by the majestic cloud and wind of the grandeur nature with photography, instead, I photographed objects that would guide to invoke those feelings (e.g., the atmosphere and the power that existed there). The objects are consisted of assemblies of lines, and perpetually continue to react to the steam of the cloud and wind, at times as an element that expresses the endless flow of the time, or a metaphor of the nature itself.
Yoshiki Hase
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[Artist Profile]
Yoshiki Hase was based in New York from 1999 until 2006 and currently resides in Tokyo. He has showcased in international scenes through photo festivals, including the “Dali International Photography Exhibition” (2019, Dali, China) and “T3 International Photo Festival” (2017, Tokyo). He has actively held solo exhibitions including “181° – New Dimensions of Nature Landscapes” (2019, River City Bangkok Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand), “DESSIN” (2018, Kana Kawanishi Gallery, Tokyo), and “Refuse to Make Them Happen” (2018, G Gallery, Taipei). Hase received the “LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards” (2018), “Tokyo International Photography Competition” (2016), among other international photography awards.