DAY FOR NIGHT

We are pleased to present Toshio Shibata’s “DAY FOR NIGHT”, his solo exhibition at POETIC SCAPE, from September 2nd, 2023.

After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1974 with a degree in oil painting, Toshio Shibata worked for a film production company for about a year. However, he could not give up his passion for creating artworks, and in 1975 he went to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. At first, he aimed to study printmaking, which he had practiced since he was a student at the Tokyo University of the Arts, but the academy encouraged him to enroll in the newly established photography department, and he began to pursue photography seriously.
Four years later, in 1979, Shibata returned from Belgium and began shooting night views with a large format 4×5 inch camera.

　”After returning from Belgium, I tried to take up photography seriously in Japan, but the scenery in Japan at that time was so different from that of Flanders, where I had spent the previous four years, that I was strongly perplexed by its chaotic atmosphere. However, at night, the hustle and bustle of the daytime disappeared, and I found it interesting to see lights only where they were needed, especially on highways, which is common all over the world.” (Looking back on the occasion of this exhibition. The same applies to the quotations that follow.)

Wanting to quickly find his own photographic subjects, Shibata began to shoot daytime in addition to his nighttime photography. Instead of using subjects that were already established and evaluated, such as beautiful landscapes, Shibata began to pursue works that used commonplace objects that are not generally considered photogenic as subjects. In the process, he shot a concrete structure seen across a road near the proposed dam construction site (Miyagase, Kiyokawa village, Aiko country, Kanagawa Prefecture, 1983), and felt that he had finally found what he was meant to photograph. After that, Shibata continued to shoot it, and in 1988 he switched to an 8×10 inch camera, and in 1992 he released “The Quintessence of Japan,” which became one of Shibata’s masterpieces.

　”I became an artist out of a desire to do something new, and until then I had tried many different medium. When shooting photographs in Japan, I was very conscious of not following the traditional way of looking at things, and of creating images and spaces that had never existed before.”

The nighttime and daytime photographs shot by Shibata between 1980 and 1988 have been compiled into one book, “Day for Night,” by Los Angeles-based publisher DEADBEAT CLUB, after a lapse of about 35 years. Although Shibata is now one of Japan’s leading photographers, the works he produced as a young artist in search of his own unique photographic expression have transcended generations and still have a fresh appeal today.

This exhibition will feature contact prints made from the 4×5 inch negatives used for photography at the time, as well as rare vintage prints made during that period.