Taka Ishii

Digitalis
8 December 2012 – 19 January 2013
(Winter holidays: December 28, 2012 – January 7, 2013)

Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film is pleased to present Erika Yoshino’s solo exhibition “Digitalis” from December 8 to January 19. Yoshino started making color works in 2010 and released the acclaimed book Just Like on the Radio in 2011. “Digitalis” will include 15 of her latest works produced after the publication of Just Like on the Radio between 2011 and 2012.
I spent the day reading Yumiko Oshima. Here is a passage from her Digitalis:
Since childhood, I too have been basically unable to see the stars with my naked eyes. If I close my eyes, though, I see galaxies. They are amorphous luminous bodies that appear out of nowhere when I force my eyes closed because I cannot sleep. As a child, I used to study them often and discovered that some had consistent forms and moved at fixed speeds. I named the largest and brightest galaxy ‘Digitalis.’
Digitalis is also the name of my birth month flower, which is otherwise known as foxglove. According to Maurice Maeterlinck, it is ‘a flower that shoots into the sky like a depressed rocket.’
‐Erika Yoshino
Erika Yoshino was born in Honjo City in Saitama Prefecture in 1970. She began making photographs in 1989 and graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1994. While at the College, she was influenced by Kiyoshi Suzuki and began producing black and white “street photography” images in the late 1990s. In 2010, she began producing color work. Her works, shot in Tokyo and the northern Kanto region, are tranquil, but also forcefully draw their viewers in with their unique worldview.
Yoshino has had a number of solo exhibitions including “ICE Echo Wave” (Ginza Nikon Salon, 1995), “Enoshima Zero Meter” (Works H., 1996), “Max is Making Wax” (Viewing Room Yotsuya, 2001), “Eleanor Rigby” (Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino, 2008), and “Just Like on the Radio” (Port Gallery T, 2011). She has also been included in many group exhibitions including “Eleven & Eleven: Korea Japan Contemporary Art 2002” (Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, 2002), “Black Out: Contemporary Japanese Photography (Istituto Giapponese di Cultura in Roma, 2002, traveled to Paris and Tokyo), and “Nonchalant” (4-F Gallery, Los Angeles, 2004).