On Exhibit: “Steam and Ice,” Hiroyo Kaneko

Steam & Ice: Hiroyo Kaneko

On Exhibit: April 12- May 26, 2012

Artist Reception: Thursday April 26, 6-9pm

Water, in its many forms presents opportunities for connection to engage our environment, as well as offering its own unique challenges. Contemplating the states of water seems especially relevant in the wake of Japan’s recent Tsunami and other natural and man-made disasters. The photographs presented in this exhibition, Steam & Ice, speak to the physicality and varying transformative expressions of water.

 

The works presented here represent two bodies of work by Japanese-born photographer Hiroyo Kaneko taken in her native Japan, including her hometown of Aomori. In these works, routine traditions in Japan such as the bath and shoveling snow reveal a more complex relationship to water, family and community.

 

Kaneko presents both an intimate and removed view into these routines – in one instance photographing herself and her family at a hot spring outside of Tokyo. Here we see a family intimately sharing in this common practice valued for its promise of renewal and healing. In contrast, Kaneko’s photographs of Aomori townspeople offer a quirkier look into negotiating the impacts of weather and living in close proximity to one another. Unlike the seclusion of the hot springs, we see how a community connects working together to dig each other out of the ice and snow. Like steam, ice offers healing qualities to preserve and provide new growth.

 

Marisa Aragona

Director of Exhibitions, RPAH

Hiroyo Kaneko is currently based in San Francisco, California. Born in Aomori, Japan, she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and a BA in French Literature from Maiji Gakuin University, Tokyo in 1987. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and Japan including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, Rayko Photo Center, the Nagasaki City Library and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. In 2009, Kaneko was a recipient of the Santa Fe Prize for Photography. Her work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Rayko Photo Center.