Takagi Masakatsu – Journal for People

journal_for_people.jpg

cd+dvd, Carpark, cprk32
The use of video to reread social moments in terms of abstract processes that can be differently computed is quite common among artists, but there’s a sort of Japanese specific trait in trying to use images poetry to formalize them. In this collection of works by Takagi Masakatsu the human beings are used as as pixel inside a bigger complex picture, computed by collective movements. Usually dealing, explicitly or implicitly, with natural basic elements like water, air, or fire the visual patterns built on people’s behaviors are aimed to render the sublime. The result is light as an eye breath, even ethereal in many passages, but sometimes being lost in the natures’ own lyrical elements. Similarly to artist like Ryoichi Kurokawa or Yuki Kawamura, the author seems to be interested in invisible structures, making them understandable from a visual perspective. So he extensively uses light and his combinatorial possibilities to enhance the discovered patterns, sometimes adding a dynamic semantic of digital (like in ‘Birdland’ or ‘Salida del Sol’) to the universal originals, finally generating a peculiar hybrid.