Tayloe Piggott Gallery is pleased to present Mizu (Water), a selection of photographs by Tokyo-based artist Tomohiro Muda, on view in Jackson Hole from May 10th through June 13th. Well known for images inspired by sites of religious devotion and pilgrimage, artist Tomohiro Muda (b. 1956) turns his lens on the natural world with a selection of photographs of earth's most precious resource: Water (Mizu in Muda’s native Japanese).
Muda's atmospheric depictions of the seemingly omnipresent yet also fragile liquid reflect an individual aesthetic that conforms to international trends in fine-art photography and builds on traditional Japanese sensitivity to mankind's environment, inflected with a sense of reverent awe at the sacred energy of natural forces. Conceived as the first in series of five exhibitions devoted to the traditional Asian Five Elements of Chi (Earth), Sui (Water), Ka (Fire), Fuu (Wind), and Kuu (Sky), Mizu (Water) features black and white photographs that explore water in all its aspects, from the mirror-like surfaces of a lotus pond to dynamic compositions of spray and steam. Muda eschews the merely literal in pursuit of an approach to his subject that almost conveys a three-dimensional effect expressing his bodily experience of water. As noted by leading art-historian and critic Yūji Yamashita, with this exhibition he "seems to be aiming toward a grand summation" of all his previous practice.
One exhibited scroll depicts a waterfall named ‘Nachi’ located in Wakayama Prefecture. This waterfall has been an object of worship since ancient times. Believed to house a kami called Hiryū Gongen worshiped at Kumano Nachi Taisha, it is part of the 'Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range' UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Tomohiro Muda is a photographer based in Tokyo and was born in Nara Prefecture in 1956. In 1980, he graduated from Waseda University, and in 1982 began living in and photographing a Sherpa village in the Himalayas. Since presenting his 1988 solo exhibition The Land of Sherpa, he has searched far and wide for the ‘primordial connection between humans, nature and space,’ and a variety of other phenomena, releasing them in exhibitions and books. His works have been exhibited widely in Japan and abroad. The Icons of Time exhibition was shown in 2016 at the Japan Foundation Gallery, Sydney, Australia as part of Art Month Sydney, in 2014 at The Shoto Museum of Arts, Tokyo and in 2013 at Mitsuo Aida Museum, Tokyo.