Hakuho - Yoshihiko Ueda

Weekday 11:00 - 20:00

Saturdays and Holidays 11:00 - 18:30

Sundays and Mondays Closed(Except for Holidays)

commentary

The sumo wrestler quietly, yet commandingly, nears. The air around him vibrates with the movement of his body. The photographer who had been watching him intently casually beckons him to stand in front of the camera. The wrestler takes his place in front of the photographer as if he already knows how this is going to unfold, and the photo shoot suddenly begins. “Hakuho” was shot very decisively. And now that portrait stands before us.

The person in the photograph is unquestionably the great yokozuna of this generation, Hakuho Sho. The scent of his hair wafting from his fan-shaped topknot; the pure, whiteness of the sacred rope around his waist; the lustre on the silk of his elegant ornamental apron; the well-balanced energy exuded from his beautiful physique. The same photograph also captures the Shinto ritual that is sumo wrestling, practised by so many wrestlers over thousands of years and handed down to generation after generation. There may be no limit to what a photograph is capable of expressing.

Nahoko Ota
Tokyo-Ga Commissioner

biography

Yoshihiko Ueda

Born 1957. Among his most noted series/monographs are Quinault (Kyoto Shoin, 1993), a brooding meditation on the eponymous sacred Native American rainforest; Amagatsu (Korinsha, 1995), a backstage study of Sankai Juku dancer-choreographer Ushio Amagatsu; Portrait (Littlemore, 2003), singular impressions of 39 leading Japanese figures the likes of Takaaki Yoshimoto and Shotaro Yasuoka; At Home (Littlemore, 2006), intimate snapshots of the artist's family; Yume (Seigensha, 2010), timeless, dreamlike images from a Buddhist monastery in Mandalay; and Frank Lloyd Wright (X-Knowledge, 2003), a portfolio of the architect's buildings documented with a Leica. Since 2008, Ueda’s work has been exhibited at Paris Photo, among other art fairs. His “QUINAULT” photographs were featured in solo exhibitions at Michael Hoppen Gallery (London) and TAI Gallery (Santa Fe) in 2010 and his “Materia” photographs of primeval forest taken on the island of Yakushima at Gallery 916 in 2012. He released his “M.River” series of out-of-focus images of ancient streams in the mountains of Yakushima in March 2013, and in May, his “M.Sea” series of digital photographs taken with a single-lens reflex camera of the Sea of Japan from the Tojinbo cliffs of Fukui Prefecture, and in November, his solo exhibition were featured at Galerie taménaga France. His works are in the collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City), New Mexico Arts (Santa Fe), Hermés International (Paris), Stichting Art & Theatre (Amsterdam), and Bibliothèque nationale de France.

overview

Hakuho
Yoshihiko Ueda

Date : 21 March, 2014 - 12 April, 2014
Time : Weekday 11:00 - 20:00 / Saturdays and Holidays 11:00 - 18:30
Closed : Sundays and Mondays (Except for Holidays)
Entrance Fee : 800 yen / 500 yen for students (Gallery916 & 916small)
Hosted by : Incorporated non-profit organisation TOKYO-GA
Funded by : Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
Associated with : Office Konjo Co., Ltd., Miyagino Sumo Stable, TimeOut TOKYO

Yoshihiko Ueda, the photographs For enquiries regarding
the purchase of the photographs, please contact the gallery.
TEL: +81-(3)-5403-9161 / FAX: +81-(3)-5403-9162
MAIL: mail[a]gallery916.com