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Solo Exhibition "Selections From Three Series" Artist: Hiroyo Kaneko Exhibition: Thursday, November 5- December 19, 2009 Opening Reception: Thursday, November 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Togonon
gallery is pleased to present Hiroyo Kaneko's "Selections From Three
Series" in her first solo exhibition at the gallery. The show will
feature photographs from The Three Cornered World, Sentimental
Education, and Picnics series. Kaneko is a recipient of the Santa Fe
Prize for Photography 2009. Her work is currently in the Photography
Now: China, Japan, Korea exhibition at the San Francisco MOMA until
December 20, 2009.
Kaneko explores photography as a mediator between time, space, people and the photographer herself. "These photographs are attempts to absorb personal moments and subtly reveal their varying facets", the artist explains. The Three Cornered World series is inspired by Soseki Natsume's novel Kusamakura. The series displays scenes from Tokyo and San Francisco and is driven by the idea of journey or "soyuu," a Japanese word meaning "I have once amused myself here." In Picnics and the Sentimental Education, Kaneko takes a more personal and passionate look at human figures and their environments. Hiroyo Kaneko is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Rayko Photo Center. She has exhibited in the United States and Japan including the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, Rayko Photo Center and the Headlands Center for the Arts, and Togonon Gallery. She completed her MFA in Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. She lives and works in the U.S. and Japan. "Counterpoint 2009, The Beginning" -Recent Works of 7 West Coast Artists Using Photography Participating Artists: Richard Bluecloud Castaneda, Jack Fulton, Klea McKenna, Darcy Padilla, Jackson Patterson, Jessica Skloven, & Lucia Zegada Exhibition Dates: November 5-December 31, 2009 Opening Reception: Thursday, Nov. 5, 5:30-7:30 pm Meet the Artists: Saturday, December 5, 3:00 p.m. Catalog Available Togonon Gallery inaugurates a new exhibition space devoted to photography at its 77 Geary Street location with "Counterpoint 2009, The Beginning--Recent Works of Seven West Coast Artist Using Photography". This is a showcase of the freshest and most engaging work of West Coast photographers in the first show in a series answering the query: "Is there a West Coast perspective that can be captured by present day Photography?" The artists in the show are on both established and emerging career paths. They bring together elements of their artistic talents to create images that reflect nature, beauty, politics, poetic symbolism, personal and social issues, balancing varied photographic techniques from the historical to the cutting edge technology and simultaneously responding to worldwide photography practice. This will be a rare treat to see local Bay Area artists in an established gallery setting downtown. Counterpoint, 2009, artists articulate their views about doing photography in the West Coast  “As a Native American and having lived all of my life on the west coast, I became interested in the portrayal of Native identity and the lack of an honest representation in the media. Beginning with the question of what a Native identity is, I use my camera as my template, then use additional materials and techniques of layering to build up the concept. Once completed, I revisit the texture to determine its final message”. -Richard Bluecloud Castaneda “Since WWII a dichotomy of the expressive content in art articulation has existed between the East and the West coasts. For  one fascinated by
jazz, and believing that to be true American music of complexity, there
was also an ideational war. But as things East moved West such as
baseball, banking and other popular social factors related to
television via the old path of manifest destiny, the differences
between the East and the West Coasts diminished.
My artwork in the 21st C is essentially what I’d say to be American
Western expression. It allies ideas from calculus, jazz solos and the
idea of stream of consciousness. It is cross-pollinational, text ridden
and with no discernment as to color or black and white.
-Jack Fulton
“My relationship to nature lies somewhere between adoration and suspicion. This ambivalence is the source of my recent projects, which have each dealt with human relationship to nature and landscape. In my current work I explore the materiality of the photographic  medium and it’s potential to
interact with place and landscape in new ways. I work with a variety
of
analogue photographic methods to create unlikely, sometimes abstracted
photographs. Recent experiments have included
filling the camera with
river water and folding the film up so that it reacts to light as a
3-dimensional object. While photographing landscapes in ecological
change, I want to make the flawed material of the film itself visible.
I think there is a sense of adventure that links several west coast
photographers who are engaged with experimental methods of image
making. Also, expansive spaces, whether open water or sprawling city
lights have become an emblem of the West. Having grown up in this
landscape, it comes up again and again in my imagery”. - Klea McKenna
 “As a French photographer, what struck me
visually the most in the West
Coast are the never ending landscapes: The dimensions
and the land/sky
ratio are completely different here compared to Europe. Yet, I feel
that, because I grew up watching all the American classics, I have
known these places forever. Traveling the West Coast I constantly feel
like I am on a movie set. And this is one of the main ideas in my
photographic work: I intend to give a cinematic quality to my images,
and I like to see each of them as the beginning of a story. In my work
I am always looking for the strange and to give a dreamlike dimension
to reality”.
- Lucia Zegada
 “I
never really have an idea of what the image is going to look like until
it's finished, but if I began my practice with an intuitive approach to
picture making, that is seeing and reacting, now I approach projects
from both an intellectual and emotional response to the subjects. In
this, I don't know if there is a West Coast perspective per se, but
living and growing up in the West has had an effect on the art I make.
I think art is the product of your environment and the experiences you
have”.
- Jackson Patterson
“I view the indeterminate stretch of ocean meeting land neither as an end nor a beginning, but as a negotiation  of two very separate worlds.
To me, the West Coast is an embodiment of this physical coalescing of
space that has enabled me to expand my field of vision. My work has
evolved from being entirely abstract to having a more subjective
sensibility that is influenced by this landscape and my interaction
with it. I have become increasingly interested in the relationship
between the illusions that occur in the natural world and those that
are produced-- both in the act of photographing and in the
re-constitution of those images when they are transferred to paper in
the darkroom.” -
Jessica Skloven
“My work as a documentary photographer started from a sense that I could not  create anything as moving as real life
looked at with
sympathy. There is no transcendence in these stories, no triumphal arc
plot, only struggle. My photography at present still explores this
struggle. There is a certain sad byway of human nature that I keep
walking. I am not sure there is a West Coast perspective in my work. My
subject matter transcends both Coasts. My photography from early on
always focuses on social issues – poverty, homelessness, incarceration,
AIDS – whether it is on the West Coast, East, or abroad”.
-Darcy
Padilla
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CLOSED for the HolidayS: November 26-28th, 2009 December 19- January 4, 2010