EXHIBITIONS

Shiro Takatani

Ice core 2005
Shiro TAKATANI
Commissioned by the Natural History Museum of Latvia in Riga, for the exhibition “Conversations with Snow and Ice – observation/imagination –,” (2005/06)
With cooperation of Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, National Institute of Polar Research in Japan, Takeo Hondo, Atsushi Miyamoto, Gorow Wakahama, and Fujiko Nakaya.

In 1984, while a student at Kyoto City University of Arts, Shiro Takatani was one of the founding members of the artist collective Dumb Type, which primarily consisted of other students at KCUA including the late Teiji Furuhashi. Takatani was involved in the production of Dumb Type’s performances and installations in a wide range of areas, including video, lighting, graphics, and set design. He has also been active on his own since 1998, producing works incorporating prisms and lenses as well as sophisticated high-tech video installations and performances. Staged productions include La Chambre Claire (Theatre Der Welt, Germany, 2008) and Chroma (Biwako Hall, Shiga, Japan, 2012). Takatani’s work displays a keen observation of spatial and temporal interrelationships and the natural world, and a consistent concern with perception of optical phenomena. In 2013-14, the first solo exhibition providing a comprehensive overview of his oeuvre, “Camera Lucida”, was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

Takatani has collaborated with other artists in a wide range of media, including with Fujiko Nakaya on Cloud Forest at YCAM (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, 2010) and with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Mansai Nomura on Life-Well (YCAM, 2013). At the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art (Gallery A), Takatani presents the video installation Ice Core (2005), an homage to Ukichiro Nakaya, and supervises the exhibition of Nakaya’s scientific photographs of snow crystals and electrostatic discharges.

http://shiro.dumbtype.com/