Osamu Kanemura and Hiroko Komatsu

Looper Syndicate

Sincerity Department Loyal Division

October 21 – December 18, 2021

dieFirma, Cooper Square, NYC

In Looper Syndicate, a claustrophobic feeling emerges from Kanemura's landscapes without a horizon line and the notable absence of negative space. The installation displays Kanemura’s idea of photographic “extra-technique” in an era when standard photography techniques have become accessible to all and photographs ubiquitous, questioning the importance of human subjectivity in the process of capturing an image as an expression of individuality. Since 2018, Kanemura has been making collages and Artists’ Books by dismantling and rebuilding other people's photographs, texts, and printed matters: propagating from the overflowing repository of materials that surrounds our daily lives—an endless loop of remixing images. By doing so, Kanemura touches upon the concepts of non-editing and the destruction of the frame through the physical manipulation of the image.

“A friend of mine saw one of my collages and said, ‘my eyes are almost vomiting’ when I look at your book,” Kanemura says of his collection of Artist Books completed for the exhibition. “I always thought that photography was in itself, a substance. People think that photographs are images, but photographs are integrated within a few millimeters of thin paper. The images don’t just exist; they exist upon the surface of the paper. When the material, physical aspects of photographs disappear, it is deeply unsatisfying.”

Occupying the ground floor of dieFirma’s gallery is Hiroko Komatsu’s Sincerity Department Loyal Division, which also pushes the boundaries of photographic prints in today’s increasing dematerialization of images. The subjects of her photographs are construction or waste materials: pipes, tubes, ropes, poles, plates, various different-shaped tools and supplies. Instead of exhibiting each photo as a single piece, Komatsu creates a crowded space, using the accumulation of repetitive images of these construction sites so that no single photo is distinguishable from the whole. As in her hand-made books, “the prints in the room have their own rules and patterns that speak to each other. They are parts, but I don’t know what the whole would be, yet it feels like the parts themselves have their own realm between construction and destruction,” Komatsu says.

The installation consists of overflowing, precariously arranged black and white images on the wall and floor, densely covered with 8x10 prints, long rolls of uncut photographic paper draping from the ceiling, and 8mm film screened in a CRT monitor. Komatsu recycles and reuses her prints in different iterations of her exhibitions and her Artists’ Books. Visitors are invited to step on layers of photographs that line the floor, reminiscent of construction sites filled with overlooked and discarded debris.

Looper Syndicate and Sincerity Department Loyal Division are open to the public from 11:00 AM - 5:30 PM, Wednesdays through Saturdays, from October 21 through December 18, 2021.

In accordance with local guidelines and to ensure the health and safety of all our guests and staff, masks are required inside the exhibition, as well as proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

For further information please refer to current local guidelines provided by New York City as well as the CDC website.

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