SF Camerawork | Past Exhibitions: Winter 2008

Winter 2008 Exhibitions
3 January - 22 March 2008
Special Reception with the Artist:
Tuesday 15 January, 5 - 8 pm

Photos from the burning ceremony for
Katsushige Nakahashi's Kaiten are now online:

Katsushige Nakahashi:
The Depth of Memory
3 January - 22 March 2008
Special Reception with the Artist:
Tuesday 15 January, 5 - 8 pm

On December 7, 2006, the sixty-fifth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese artist Katsushige Nakahashi photographed, from sunrise to sunset, a portion of the USS Missouri's deck. His selection of this specific site on board the ship is charged with historical significance; during the Pacific battle of World War II a Kamikaze fighter hit this particular section of the Missouri. Composed of more than 5,000 photographs, spanning more than 40-feet, and assembled by a team of volunteers at Japan's Tottori Prefectural Museum in May 2007, On the Day 7th December, 2006 / Battleship Missouri,Pearl Harbor is layered with temporal depth that physically embodies "sculptural time," or historical time represented with physical form.

Key to Nakahashi's first Bay Area solo exhibition is the newly commissioned: Kaiten—a World War II Japanese torpedo outfitted to accommodate a lone Kamikaze pilot. In his studio this autumn, Nakahashi painstakingly photographed the entire surface of a toy model Kaiten at 1:32 scale producing more than 20,000 photographs. These images will be assembled, with Nakahashi's oversight, in Camerawork's gallery during December and January to create a 50-foot simulacrum of the infamous "suicide submarine." Nakahashi’s work can be situated within a framework of relational aesthetics and social pratice. As the photographs of the miniature are only pieces of the artwork, they are corollary to their subsequent assembly/interaction of artist and viewer/participant. It is essential to Nakahashi’s art practice that the construction of this piece be done in the gallery, during the exhibition, with as broad-ranging a cross section of volunteers as can be organized.

Kaiten construction timelapse video

To learn more about how you can participate in this exhibition, please visit: http://online.sfsu.edu/~amkerner/Kaiten/VolunteerForm.html

Curated by Aaron Kerner & Chuck Mobley

This exhibition is made possible with support from the
National Endowment for the Arts, Columbia Foundation,
and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Past Exhibitions
View descriptions and selected photos from
exhibitions of the past few years here.

Admission:
(suggested donation)
$5 for general public
$2 for students and seniors
FREE for SFCW members
Open late First Thursday of each month
Free admission First Tuesday of each month