Satoshi Saïkusa — No-Zarashi — Da-End Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 21 → November 11, 2017

This fall, the Galerie Da-End presents ‘No-Zarashi’, a solo exhibition by Japanese photographer and multidisciplinary artist Satoshi Saïkusa.

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Based in Paris since the beginning of the 1980s, he soon initiated an international career as a fashion and portraits photographer. Reputed for his mastery of light work that magnifies the subject, he adjusts every detail as a director seeking for the perfect moment.

Satoshi Saikusa, Purple universe, 2017 Tirage pigmentaire digital archive, fil et feuille de platine — 40 × 50 × 5,7 cm Courtesy de l’artiste & la Galerie Da-End, Paris

Over the last decade, Satoshi Saïkusa has turned towards artistic projects in which the themes of memory and the fragility of being appear recurrently, shedding light on his own preoccupations. Developed in the form of drawings, photo-entomological compositions, video and sculptures, the Buddhist concept of impermanence seems to dialogue incessantly with that of memento mori.

Satoshi Saikusa, Bon’no II (Lust), 2015 Digital pigment prints, butterflies and insects in entomological box — 150 × 180 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Da-End, Paris

The artist in fact doesn’t elude the philosophical meditation about the meaning of life, as evidenced by the body of work shown here, in which one can spot an iconography filled with symbols such as flowers, butterflies and skulls. In Japan, it is the custom not to fully explain things but rather indicate a semantic direction and let the other give his own interpretation. Fond of this spirit maieutics, Saïkusa prefers to raise questions through his art rather than delivering any message. Inspired by the short story « In a Grove » by famous Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), the artist distorts the supposedly truthful photographic medium to tell his own stories.

Satoshi Saikusa, Gensô, 2017 Tirage pigmentaire digital archive, papillons, chêne — 100 × 80 × 10 cm Courtesy de l’artiste & la Galerie Da-End, Paris

Following the Paris attacks of 2015, Saïkusa notably visited the different commemorative places with his camera and immortalized the piles of flowers and drawings left by the population. These precise records are placed at the heart of most of the exhibition’s works, kaleidoscopic baroque montages or circular dots whose colors are as vivid as their significance is dark.

Torn between his Japanese culture of birth and his French culture of adoption, Satoshi Saïkusa examines today’s world and its disruptions with a sort of detachment, mixed with curiosity. Marked with this syncretism, his artistic production sees the shadow of ideological conflicts merge into that of Eros and Thanatos.