Fumi Ishino

February 25, 2022 - April 15, 2022

Like walking into a refraction of red light, the familiar can become peculiar during times of kaleidoscopic social, psychological, and cultural changes. Accepted codes of moving through the world become distorted through the transparent—and thus often-invisible—mechanics of a societal transformation. The photographs, taken over the last five years, and interjected occasionally with everyday activities, reflect a sense of displacement when viewed through the prism of personal, pathological, and political events.

The work incorporates a spatial and conceptual aesthetic of bizarre tones, as referenced in The Masque of the Red Death* written by Edgar Allen Poe. While constructing a dialogue of visual language from different time zones and locations, the representation of the color red is ubiquitous and ambivalent, recalling opposing feelings of danger/safety, regulation/freedom, disgrace/honor, and low/high in social power structure. 

The exhibited area, as a roughly insulated darkroom with safelights, allows light leaks, or other impacts and noises to pour in from the outside. The space instigates interactions of gaze between viewers and the work, creating the sensation of monitoring and being monitored. In this darkroom, the red light reveals specific aspects of the environment, carrying questions about the intersection of shifting perceptions such as inclusion/acceptance and exclusion/rejection.

 *Edgar Allen Poe’s prescient short story, first published in 1842, describes Prince Prospero’s attempts to escape a deadly plague known as the Red Death by secluding himself and other nobles in his abbey. 

All thirteen pictures presented were made between 2016 and 2021. They are all Untitled, archival pigment prints mounted on dibond.