Kim KototamaLune & Satoki Nagata — Synapsis — Da-End Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 18 → July 1, 2017

In 1897, the British physiologist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1852-1952) enabled a major advance in the field of neurosciences by introducing the term « synapse » into the medical lexicon. From the Greek σύναψις (syn = together and haptein = touch, grasp ; in the sense of connexion), the synapse designates the junction point between two nerve cells, permitting the transmission of information from one to the other.

By inviting for the first time the Japanese photographer Satoki Nagata to show his poetic pictures alongside Kim KototamaLune’s impressive glass sculptures, the Galerie Da-End once more wishes to form bonds and a visual dialogue between two apparently remote worlds.

Satoki Nagata, Millenium Park, Chicago, 2013 Impression charbon (Piezography) Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Da-End, Paris

A former neuroscientist himself, Satoki Nagata attempts through his photographs to reveal the interconnected relationships that shape our existence. Thanks to subtle lightning effects, he enhances the anonymous figures of whom he seizes the silhouette in the streets of Chicago, where he’s been living since the beginning of the 1990s. As a result of the long-exposure and flash techniques he uses, the photographed bodies loose their substance and seem to merge with the urban and natural elements around them.

Satoki Nagata‘s captivating images disclose the tiny moments of grace of a daily life submitted to the rhythm of the city, and lead to a new putting into perspective of people within their environment. This approach, linked to the Buddhist cosmology, finds a particular resonance here with Kim KototamaLune’s artworks, being themselves permeated with a strong ontological message.

Kim Kototama Lune, Jardin des Veilles, 2015 Blown glass, spun glass Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Da-End, Paris

Born in 1976 in Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville (Vietnam), Kim KototamaLune lives and works in France where she has long accumulated the learning of different « traditional » crafts such as textile or scale modelling, before taking an interest in glasswork. A material that she spins « out of blanks » without a mould, weld after weld building a grid until a form appears. « Glass — a solid that has forgotten its liquid molecular nature, proves to be an accurate medium to express this both frail and strong dimension of life, » she explains. « Matter that borders on the immaterial in a troubling way, thus bringing the invisible out within the visible. »

Satoki Nagata, Michigan Avenie, Chicago, 2011 Impression charbon (Piezography) Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Da-End, Paris

Kim KototamaLune’s sculptures let imaginary worlds emerge, with a link to the real world, biology or botany. Their organic beauty questions the representation of imperceptible phenomenon such as the generation of beings, their metamorphosis; these in-between spaces that are indicative of the passing from one state to the other.