NORIKO FURUNISHI: Landscapes

16 September — 15 October, 2005
1 /

Noriko Furunishi’s vertical landscape photographs present a world in a fragile balance between the tranquility of an inchoate primordial state and the tumult of glacial, seismic and diluvial transformation.

Upon closer inspection, the pictures reveal themselves to be fragmented images woven together, flipped horizontally and vertically, their perspectives destabilized, their horizons eradicated. In the tradition of Eastern landscape paintings, but also reminiscent of the apocalyptic landscapes of 19th century Western Romantic painting, man’s presence is small and insignificant. Only the slightest signs of life, a hut or a truck, can give some tenuous indication of a scale that shifts dramatically and illogically.

Viewing these pictures is a theatrical experience, dreamlike, hallucinogenic and intoxicating, but their hi-tech creation is also a reminder of the ecological manipulation, toxic effluents and natural disasters of our modern age.

Noriko Furunishi was born in Kobe, Japan. She received her BFA at Pratt Institute, New York, and her MFA at the University of California Los Angeles. She lives and works in Los Angeles.