Japanese artist Youki Hirakawa balances serenity with death (of people, trees and our own surroundings) in detailed drawings, in situ installations, photographic manipulations and video work. White Rainbow gallery, London have just opened Into a Horizon — a solo show that displays the produce of his one year residency at Berlin’s Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
There is an inventive balance between old and new, with Hirakawa working conceptually, mostly in black and white, and very often with vintage materials. Close Your Eyes (2013-15) comprises a set of monochrome and sepia photographs from Berlin flea markets that are at least 100 years old. Hirakawa has altered the images to give all the sitters a calm shut-eye, sending them to a place of rest. There is something comically sweet about this, but there is also a sense of death as a burdensome and inescapable subject. Each photograph comes with a small black box which acts as a case for the photograph and a tiny coffin for the deceased figure.
Trees in a Book (2015) is a collection of 14 lithographs of trees that have been sourced from a 19th Century encyclopaedia from Leipzig. The main tree images have been cut out so that only their stumps remain. Linking back to the material of the encyclopaedia — paper, therefore, dead trees — this is another simple work that addresses death and finality via a distractingly tranquil aesthetic.
Hirakawa’s installation A Root for a Room (2014) consists of an upside down glass that holds underground water from near the gallery’s location. As the temperature in the gallery changes, the pressure also changes and the water slowly evaporates and disappears over the course of a few months. The death of the material — the disappearance of the water — is shown as something tied up with its own environment. This illustrates Hirakawa’s image of death very well; it is so lacking in apparent violence, appearing instead as something that is part and parcel of change and environment, a sombre necessary for a constantly evolving situation.
Into a Horizon is open at White Rainbow, London until August 8.
