Naoyuki Ogino

 'Perfectly Imperfect': Ogino Naoyuki (1975)

 Ogino’s works are made by using the technique of salt printing, the first photographic printing techniques used in the 1830s during the time of the invention of photography. In those times it was a struggle how to fixate the image that appeared after exposing the negative to sunlight. One had to overcome the impermanence of the image. Ogino fixates his quiet and intimate images printed on thin washi paper with natural bee’s wax, resulting in the paper becoming translucent, which gives the works an ethereal atmosphere. The sepia color of Ogino’s prints are inherent to the technique of salt printing and evoke a feeling of the passage of time, ‘mono no aware’.

For this exhibition, Ogino decided to reflect on wabi-sabi through water. Ogino feels that “wabi-sabi is based on a sense of solitude, melancholy, simplicity and finds part of its beauty in the transience or impermanence of the human world. Water is indeed impermanent, melancholic and minimally simple. On the other hand, water is also the essence of our body (more than 60% is water), and I believe that it has the power to remind us of the nature of flux, rebirth or oneness".