A retrospective of one of Japan’s most acclaimed artists will get underway at Foam in Amsterdam in December, offering a chance to look back through the oeuvre of Nobuyushi Araki and experience a previously unseen series of the artist’s work. ARAKI Ojo Shashu – Photography for the Afterlife: Alluring Hell is the over-complicated title for a body of work that centres around the simple themes of sex and death; Alluring Hell refers to a recently rediscovered collection of works from 2008, never exhibited before, in which Araki painted over his own black-and-white erotic photographs with a lurid palette.
Blood-stained dolls and flowers occupy dark scenes in the artist’s most recent work, qARADISE, and speaking of dark, there will be a selection of work from Araki’s Kinbaku (art of tight binding) photography, if looking at distressed women strung up with rope like human marionettes sounds like your cup of tea. The 74-year-old Araki has never shied away from the prurient and vulgar throughout his long career, but this exhibition also demonstrates his talent for capturing the gentle, personal and intimate, including the relationship between the artist and his Tokyo surroundings and with his wife, who died in 1990. The exhibition runs from 19 December 2014 to 11 March.
Alluring Hell, 2008
© Nobuyoshi Araki in collaboration with
Galerie Alex Daniëls – Reflex Amsterdam
Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey, 1971/1990
© Courtesy Nobuyoshi Araki
Alluring Hell, 2008
© Nobuyoshi Araki in collaboration with
Galerie Alex Daniëls – Reflex Amsterdam
Sentimental Journey/Winter Journey, 1971/1990
© Courtesy Nobuyoshi Araki
