ARTIST STATEMENT

I work with a variety of media―from installation to sculpture, text to photography―but the conceptual basis for my work is always the print.
Duality, indirectness, and plurality are essential parts of the physical creation of prints―and of the way of thinking that printmaking embodies and promotes. Printmaking involves multiple perspectives. I am interested in investigating the possibilities of printmaking as a way of thinking, as a cognitive mode that connotes and denotes multiple dimensions and layers in physical, conceptual, and sociological structures.
Printed matter has always been the most influential media for me. Time and space, consisting of letter and image as ink on paper, only exist in printed matter. Time and space have a reality which can be realized only in this form. Although prints emerge as indirect, secondary, and mass-produced objects through the process of editing, translating, and copying, the experiences of both creator and viewer are always primal, direct, and genuine. What I consider the unique and essential nature of prints―the “printness” of prints, as it were―is something that functions even though a print is a copy. To be more precise, the print functions because it is duplicated, and it is this duplication that provides the genuine experience of the medium. The experience is essentially identical to the experience of “printed letters.” I am interested in the “place” created by printed matter―the place where theoretical time, space, and a physical body meet, manifesting the “relationship” between different dimensions.
Editing, translating, and the involvement of automatic processes are essential for my work. Duality, indirectness, and plurality are created by those processes, and they generate “movement” across different dimensions. By tracing back the production process of printed matter, I am trying to reconnect physical territory to the territory of experience―and, at the same time, access the physical dimension from the dimension of representation/interpretation.
Printed matter is generated by the physical contact of a plate and paper, and in interacting with it, we utilize our fingers as much as our eyes. The state of prints―which is the result of the contact between two different things―can be superimposed on the process of self-formation―that is, the formation of a self―and therefore be considered as a model of building identity. In my work, I challenge myself to reinterpret/renew my “secondary” and ”relatively” formed “identity as print” in reaction and contradistinction to assertions of “primal,” “subjective,” and “independent” identity.

私の作品は、インスタレーション、立体、写真、テキストなど、その都度形態は異なりますが、コンセプチュアルには版画です。

二重性、間接性と複数性は、版画のプロセスやその成り立ち、考え方として本質的な要素であり、版画はそのように構造的に多くの視点を内包しています。私は、物理的、概念的、社会的な場に存在する様々な層と、多次元を統合するものとしての「版画という考え方」の可能性に興味があります。

印刷物は、私に最も大きな影響を与えたメディアです。紙の上のインクに変換されたイメージと言葉として、印刷物という形式に於いてのみ立ち上がる時空間は、そこでのみ実現可能なリアリティを持つものです。印刷物は、編集や翻訳を介した二次的で間接的なもの、複製/大量生産されたものでありながら、その前後に存在する作り手、受け手の経験そのものは一次的で直接的、唯一のこととしてあること。複製されてもなお機能するもの、より正確には複製されることで機能するもの、そのようなかたちで経験の唯一性を提供するものが、私の考える「版画的なもの」であり、それは「印刷された文字；活字」に限りなく近いものとしてあります。私はそのようにして生じた理論上の時空間と身体とが出会う「場」としての印刷物と、異なる次元をまたいだで結ばれる「関係性」のあり方に興味があります。

編集と翻訳、機械を使った自動的なプロセスの介入は自身の制作過程に欠かせない要素です。これらのプロセスが生み出す二重性、間接性と複数性により、異なる次元を行き来する「運動」が生じます。印刷物の生成過程をなぞることで、私は経験の領域を物理的な領域に再接続しようとし、解釈の次元から現実の次元にアクセスしようとしています。

印刷物は、版に紙が直接触れることで生じ、指が直接紙に触れることで読まれるように、接触を伴うものです。異なるものが互いに接触するその狭間に生じる印刷物のありようは、自己の形成過程にも重ねられ、アイデンティティの形成のひな形としても考えることができます。私は印刷物と相対することで形成されてきたリフレクションとしての「二次的」で「相対的」な「版画的な自己」を、「版画という考え方」と「版画によって生じる運動」によって、「一次的」で「主体的」な「自立」したものとして再解釈・更新することに挑戦しています。

REVIEWS/ CATALOGS/INTERVIEWS

2016 “De-Podition Open Studio 11”, catalog, Published by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
2015 "Interview by Willow Paule", Willow Paule Photography
2015 "Democracy Demonstrate"@MMCA Goyang, review by Josef Bares, Fine Art In East Asia and beyond
2014 “Emiko Sawaragi and Midori Harima" by Kevin J. Kelley , Seven Days
2012 "反転されるイメージの皮膜”「日常ワケあり展」森啓輔　美術手帳2012 1月号（Japanese)
2011 "Everyday Life/Hidden Reasons”, catalog, essay by Hitoshi Nakano, published by Kanagawa Arts Foundation
2010 “HARIMA MIDORI/ Written- Lighten”, catalog, essay by Chihiro Minato, published by EXHIBITION SPACE
2008 “Midori Harima Works 2001- 2007” catalog, essay by Syogo Otani, published by Gallery Jin
2007 MAG 09 May/June 2007 issue, “A Delicate Balance” exhibition Richard Butler and Midori Harima at Kevin Bruk Gallery review by Mariangele Capuzzo
2006 “Inner child”, catalog, published by Seigensy
artweek, May 2006 “The white album” review by David Buuck
播磨みどり「フリーフォール-Free Fall-」展"　河野晴子美術手帳2006 7月号（Japanese)
2005 "Paper Pushers”, catalog, essay by Renny Pritikin ,Ricahard L. Nelson Gallery, University of California, Davis
"Visions from New California”, catalog, published by James Irvine Foundation
S culpture Magazine, May 2005 Vol.24 No.4 issue, exhibition “Transparent Story” review by Peter Selz
Artweek, February 2005, exhibition “Transparent Story” review by Colin Berry
2004 “The Road Not Taken” text by Midori Harima / catalog, published by Art b
“Paper Trail of Perception” exhibition “Transparent Story” review by Sasha Vasilyuk, Oct 21, Daily California
"播磨みどり　ギャラリー人”　平野千枝子　美術手帳2004年 4月号 (Japanese)
2003 "Revealing Influences “ catalog, essay by Renny Pritikin , A Report vol.19, published by Museum of Craft and Folk Art 2002 "Bay Area Now3” catalog, essay by Renny Pritikin, published by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
2001 "播磨みどり　300日画廊”　白坂ゆり　美術手帳2001年 4月号 (Japanese)

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MIDORI HARIMA