Emon Photo Gallery and curator Caroline Trausch, in association with SAGE Paris, present Wittgenstein by French photographer Marie Passa. This solo show is the artist’s first exhibition in Japan and in Asia.
Born in 1977, Marie Passa studied architecture and then spent 10 years working in this domain, notably with Jean-Michel Wilmotte’s studio, one of the most important architectural firms in the world. In 2006, she decided to focus more exclusively on photography.
From 2006 to 2009, she travelled to Asia and America, photographing methodically and elaborating her own artistic expression. In 2010, she began to show her work in London and in Paris.
From 2010 to 2012, Passa focussed on colour and produced a series of 147 works, named Wittgenstein, in reference to the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. This series, as does Wittgenstein, questions colour, the meditation of the sensitive and the transformation of the perception of reality through image. Passa photographs the interiors of modern buildings, built most often by famous architects such as Le Corbusier or Luis Barragan. She reveals the beauty of contemporary architecture and its capacity to move us, and plays with colours as if they were musical notes. She takes us on a journey inside of buildings and the places in which we live, and offers us an unexpected view, reinvented and poetic, of the functional spaces of our communal lives that people do not look at, or through the prism of their preferences or prejudices. She escapes from the descriptive rendition and pushes the limits of the photograph. Her distinctive approach navigates delicately between photography and painting, as well as between reality and abstraction, producing a kaleidoscopic body of unique works.
In 2013, her series Wittgenstein was acclaimed at AIPAD New York, ART BASEL and PARIS PHOTO. The same year, Passa participated in the group show Yellow at SAGE Paris together with Christo, Cy Trombly, Arshile Gorky and Marcel Duchamp. In 2014, she took part in the group exhibition Does Size Matter ? at SAGE Paris, alongside Daido Moriyama, Harry Callahan, André Kertèsz, Lucio Fontana and Andy Warhol.
The artist’s connection to architecture extends to her solo show at Emon Photo Gallery in Tokyo as the space is in the Togo building designed by Shigeru Ban, recipient of the 2014 Pritzker Prize.
EXHIBITION
Wittgenstein by Marie Passa
From 4 June to 26 July 2014
Emon Photo Gallery Tokyo
Japan
www.emoninc.com
Under the auspices of the Embassy of France and the French Institute of Japan
