Exhibit:« Thierrée / Daifu » at the Institut français de Tokyo

One of the meeting points between the artistic approaches of Victoire Thierrée (born in 1988, lives and works in Paris) and Motoyuki Daifu (born in 1985, lives and works in Tokyo) is the erasure of the body; both favoring landscapes—both physical and cultural—as well as the influence this absent body may have had on their formation.

Victoire Thierrée’s recent work focuses on Okinawa, whose political context was previously explored through the lens of Shomei Tomatsu. While Tomatsu’s work is rooted in his perspective as a Japanese photographer, Thierrée’s approach is shaped by her long-standing interest in an aesthetic drawn from military culture and its imprint on the world. Meanwhile, although Motoyuki Daifu addressed intimacy in his early projects—between members of a tightly bound, almost absurd family, and between himself and his pregnant mother/partner—the majority of his photographic work depicts deserted cities. When he captures these streets through the foreign gaze of his camera and its raw settings, the saturation of tones gives them a distinctive quality.

For this exhibition, Thierrée presents the film UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) which, through the use of military infrared technologies and a tense soundtrack, evokes the abstract anxiety associated with an extremely present subject that nonetheless remains deliberately unknown. The artist also presents sculptures that allude to military equipment as aesthetic forms dictated by their function.

The exhibition also includes a selection of photographs by Daifu from his series Untitled (Surround and Pee) as well as a print from the series Untitled (Shadow). Although no human subject or photographer appears in these images, they are nonetheless implied through the marks of urban life.

No person, no place, is clearly defined in the works of Thierrée and Daifu: only the outlines of the artifices in which their absence resides are depicted. It is within this interweaving of their personal interests and the suggested presence of this absent human subject that viewers can identify with these works—from artist to artist, and from artists to the public.

Organized by: Institut français de Tokyo, MISAKO & ROSEN
In collaboration with: Villa Kujoyama
With the support of: Fondation Bettencourt Schueller