Toronto specializing in contemporary photography
 

Akihiko Miyoshi

Akihiko Miyoshi
The Distance Between

April 27 – May 11, 2013
Circuit Gallery at Gallery 345
345 Sorauren Avenue, Toronto, Canada

Reception: Friday, April 26, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.


Circuit Gallery is proud to present The Distance Between, a solo exhibition of large-format work by Portland-based artist Akihiko Miyoshi, from his project entitled Abstract Photographs (2011), as a Featured Exhibition in the 2013 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

In Abstract Photographs Miyoshi explores the intersection between art and technology, centrally dealing with questions specific to photographic representation by cleverly exploiting the conventions of perception and representation and creating tensions between digital and analogue techniques.

Miyoshi’s photographs are playfully self-reflexive, simultaneously abstract yet photographically real. The fourteen images chosen for this exhibition are all “self-portraits” consisting of the photographer and his camera taken through a mirror, yet instead of exposing the subject in a conventional sense, they instead, through the simple use of coloured paper and tape, highlight and question the space between subject and apparatus.

While these exquisite images allude to formal abstraction with various shapes and colors, the photographic nature of the images are emphasized as the image plane is selectively focused and blurred through the use of depth of field. The usually “reference-less” nature of abstraction is contradicted by the presence of minute details captured by the use of a large format camera such as the dust, scratch marks, smears or finger prints on the surface of the mirror, or the texture of the tape and paper used, all of which makes the images photographically real.

Deliberately referencing the aesthetic of constructed digital image making—the pixel, the choice of red, green and blue tape, the surface/depth tensions—Miyoshi’s analogue self-portraits metaphorically evoke a slew of contemporary issues and questions about the status of both the photographer/author and the referent/real in the digital age.

Despite our never being able to quite “see” the artist / photographer (the person deliberately masked over or obscured in the images), we can know he has sense of humour and is firmly the producer of this clever and engaging work.

Akihiko Miyoshi: The Distance Between runs April 27 through May 11, at Circuit Gallery, with an opening reception on Friday, April 26, from 6 – 9 PM.


Artist Bio

Born in Japan, Akihiko Miyoshi received his MFA in photography in 2005 from the Rochester Institute of Technology after leaving a PhD program in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University to pursue art. Miyoshi is an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media at Reed College (Portland, OR). His work explores the intersection between art and technology most frequently dealing with issues surrounding photographic representation.

His work has been exhibited widely including Portland, New York, Los Angeles, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and Toronto. He was named the International Award Winner of Fellowship 12 at The Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh PA, and the finalist for the Betty Bowen Award from the Seattle Art Museum in 2012 and Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2013. Miyoshi received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in 2012.

Artist page: Akihiko Miyoshi


Curriculum Vitae (CV)

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Akihiko Miyoshi CV [PDF]


Works Exhibited