Painting Flower and Diaries: Nobuyoshi Araki

A group of rarely seen photographs by Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki will be on view at Anton Kern Gallery; in particular a body of work entitled Painting Flower, as well as 101 Images Dedicated to Robert Frank and other works selected from the Diaries. The exhibition opens November 17 and will continue through January 14, 2006.

Araki’s Painting Flower series of 2004 is devoted to close-ups of lilies, orchids and other waxy flowers, which he has first daubed in glowing paint. 101 Images Dedicated to Robert Frank of 1992-93 gives a respectful nod to the equally rebellious Swiss-American photographer. The exhibition is complete with images culled from recent Diaries and a group of images depicting bound women, autoerotic transgressions that transcends confinement, discipline, hierarchy and ritual compression.

Araki’s oeuvre is an amalgam of the public and private. In it, the formal and informal culminate, spontaneity and artful planning merge, naturalness and artifice overlap. After working nine years for the advertising company Dentsu, Araki became a freelance photographer in 1972. After his marriage to Yoko Aoki, he published a book of pictures of his wife taken during their honeymoon entitled Sentimental Journey, which defined the template for Araki’s distinct diaristic take on photography. Araki blends everyday-life experiences and casual, unconstrained sexuality with a highly stylized, almost ceremonial eroticism.