To coincide with Hideyuki Ishibashi’s solo exhibition entitled ‘Portraits’, which runs until 29 March 2025, Galerie Bigaignon is offering private guided tours.
The exhibition « Portraits » tells the remarkable story of a pottery company founded in Kyoto in 1916, renowned for its ancestral craftsmanship. In 1944, during World War II, the Japanese army, facing a shortage of metal, ordered the production of ceramic grenades. Potters from Fujihira Togei, with the help of schoolgirls enlisted in an emergency effort, crafted these grenades, blending traditional artistry with military necessity. After the war, 240 of the grenades were secretly buried to prevent enemy forces from discovering this unique skill.
The story might have ended there, but in 2016, during construction work near the factory, the buried grenades were rediscovered. This extraordinary find sparked a unique artistic project by Japanese artist Hideyuki Ishibashi. Ishibashi embarked on a deeply emotional and original endeavor: to capture the shadows of the grenades using the cyanotype process, exposing each one to sunlight at specific moments. The resulting prints, imbued with the passage of time, serve as a poignant record of these historically charged objects.
But the artist went further, using these cyanotype negatives to create positive images through the bichromate gum process, incorporating soil and soot from the very grounds where the grenades were produced. The outcome is a series of photographs that are both poetic and stirring, evoking the passage of time, reflecting on the past, and exploring the intersection of craftsmanship and tragedy.
Until 29 March, the Galerie Bigaignon is presenting a selection of fifty of these exceptional prints, each of which seems to embody the history of an era, the history of the age-old art of pottery confronted by the horrors of war, but also the history of a group of schoolgirls whose story could have remained buried forever. Each pomegranate has its own unique portrait.
The visits will also provide an opportunity to immerse oneself in the fascinating epic of Hideyuki Ishibashi’s previous series, ‘Presage’, a journey between dream and reality.
Book here your preferred slot now:
- Thursday March 13, 7pm to 8pm
- Friday March 21, 7pm to 8pm
- Wednesday March 26, 7pm to 8pm
- Saturday March 29, 5pm to 6pm
Galerie Bigaignon
18 rue Bourg-Tibourg
75003 Paris
bigaignon.fr
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