Toshio Shibata and Toeko Tatsuno: Given @Miller

JTF (just the facts): A two artist show containing a total of 13 black and white and color photographs by Toshio Shibata and 12 paintings by Toeko Tatsuno. Shibata's photographs are a mix of c-prints and gelatin silver prints, framed in white and matted/unmatted, and made between 1989 and 2008. His prints come in three sizes: 20x24 (in editions of 25), 32x40 (in editions of 10), and 40x50 (in editions of 10). There are 9 color works and 4 black and white works on view, split between the main gallery space, the entry area, and the smaller print room. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Toshio Shibata doesn't come from the cherry blossom in springtime school of Japanese landscape photography. His interest lies the intersection of the man-made and the natural, not so much the harsh contrasts of the American New Topographics photographers but something more tightly integrated and humanized. Paired with the geometric abstractions of Toeko Tatsuno in this back and forth show, his eye for linear pattern and sculptural form comes through even more clearly.

Stone retaining walls, concrete spillways, landslide nets, and reservoir dams are the main characters in Shibata's natural drama. Patchwork combinations of bricks, squares, and herringbone patterns dot the hillsides, intermixed with scrubby greenery and erosion mediating trees. His waterscapes turn man-made waterfalls into flat curtains of flowing white, adding an element of passing time to his images; concrete blocks and other debris bob in swirling eddy pools and at the bottom of still runoff areas. Whether using the girders of a bridge or the edge of a waterfall, Shibata manages his lines and angles with precision, seeing landscape as rigid structure, even when it is a line of trees or the rusty residue falling from a drainpipe.

Toeko Tatsuno's blocky stacks and ladder-like bookcase forms provide an insightful foil for Shibata's focus on man-made abstraction. In this context, his compositions resolve even further into systems of line, a rope of buoys becoming a graceful arc and a tethered net turning into an obtuse triangle. Shibata's landscapes depict this strict human-imposed order not as ugliness or interference, but as something graceful and well-integrated, finding harmony where others have found dissonance.

Collector's POV: The Shibata photographs in this show are priced between $3500 and $25000, based on size and place in the edition. His prints have not developed a consistent presence in the Western secondary markets; only a handful of lots have come up for recent public sale, fetching prices between $1500 and $7500, but these prices may not be entirely representative of the broader market for his work. As such, gallery retail may be the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Shibata exhibit: @Peabody Essex Museum, 2013 (here)
• Shibata interview: Eyecurious (here)

 

Toshio Shibata and Toeko Tatsuno: Given

Through May 25th

 

Laurence Miller Gallery

20 West 57th Street

New York, NY 10019

Auction: Important Photobooks & Photographs, May 19, 2011 @Swann

Swann has its Spring combo sale of photobooks and photographs in New York later this week, mixed right in the middle of the London season for maximum confusion. The photobooks section is littered with signed first editions and other rarities, highlighted by a massive single lot collection of monographs, portfolios, bound prints, loose photographs, and other volumes from 21ST Editions. The photographs section sticks more closely to the lower end/later print material Swann is best known for. Across the two sales, there are 391 lots on offer, with a total High estimate of $1704150. Since the two genres are so different, I've separated the analysis of the sale into two parts below.

Important Photobooks
.
Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 122
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $208050
.
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 5
Total Mid Estimate: $104000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 1
Total High Estimate: "Refer to Department"
.
The top lot by High estimate in the book section is lot 99, 21ST Editions, Collection, 1998-2010, at "Refer to Department".

Below is the list of photographers represented by 3 or more lots in the book portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Ed Ruscha (9)
Richard Avedon (5)
Walker Evans 5
Robert Frank (5)
Lee Friedlander (4)
Camera Work (3)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (3)
Eikoh Hosoe (3)
.
(Lot 45, Ed Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, at $8000-12000, image at right, top, via Swann.)

Photographs

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 242
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $1003100
.
Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 21
Total Mid Estimate: $389000

Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate in the photographs section is tied between two lots: lot 161, Ansel Adams, Clearing Storm, Mount Williamson, From Manzanar, Sierra Nevada, California, 1944/1970s, and lot 212, Walker Evans, 5 photographs from the portfolio Walker Evans, 1935-36/1971, both at $20000-30000.

Below is the list of photographers represented by 4 or more lots in the photographs portion of the sale (with the number of lots in parentheses):

Andre Kertesz (9)
Edward Curtis (7)
Berenice Abbott (6)
Ansel Adams (6)
Edward Weston (5)
Ilse Bing (4)
Walker Evans (4)
Milton Greene (4)
Lewis Hine (4)
Horst P. Horst (4)
Alfred Cheney Johnston (4)
Minor White (4)

(Lot 268, Margaret Bourke-White, Hi-Level Bridge, 1928, at $3000-4500, image at right, middle, and lot 293, Toshio Shibata, Yugawara Town, Kanagawa Prefecture, 1993, at $2000-3000, image at right, bottom, both via Swann.)
.
The complete lot by lot catalog (for both parts of the sale) can be found here. The 3D version is located here.

Important Photobooks & Photographs
May 19th

Swann Galleries
104 East 25th Street
New York, NY 10010

The Abstracted Landscape @Laurence Miller

JTF (just the facts): A total of 19 black and white and color works, variously framed and matted, hung in the entry and main gallery space. This a group show of four gallery artists: Peter Bialobrzeski, Stephane Couturier, DoDo Jin Ming, and Toshio Shibata. (Installation shots at right.) The details for each artist's works are below:

• Peter Bialobrzeski: 2 c-prints, 60x50 each, in editions of 10, from 2005; 6 c-prints, 11x14, in editions of 9, from 2008; and 1 c-print, 51x65, in an edition of 5, from 2003
• Stephane Couturier: 1 c-print, 26x48, AP, from 1991; 1 c-print, 52x44, in an edition of 8, from 2005; and 1 digital c-print, 50x88, in an edition of 5, from 2004
• DoDo Jin Ming: 12 gelatin silver prints, hung as a single work, 55x60, in editions of 10, from 1996; 1 gelatin silver print, 30x40, in an edition of 10, from 2002; 1 digital c-print, 51x41, in an edition of 10, from 2004; and 1 digital c-print in two parts, overall 63x49, in an edition of 10, from 2004
• Toshio Shibata: 1 gelatin silver print, 20x24, in an edition of 25, from 1990; 1 gelatin silver print, 50x40, AP, from 1996; and 1 c-print, 50x40, in an edition of 10, from 2005

Comments/Context: This exhibit is a thematic group show of gallery artists, where images have been selected based on a broadly common handling of landscape elements. And while the show is entitled The Abstracted Landscape, none of the works on view is completely abstract in the traditional sense (i.e. non-figurative); rather these images are all landscapes that turn on compositional fragments of form and line, pattern and shape.

Peter Bialobrzeski is represented by two twilight building scenes from his series Lost in Transition (book reviewed here), a typology of shacks, and a massive hillside view from Heimat that dwarfs the people down to ant-like dots. Stephane Couturier's prints take the abstraction a bit further, where a roadway flanked by spindly trees and sculpted land becomes an exercise in blocks of color and texture; another image shows a terraced ground in an unreal shade of green, using the contrasts of the land to create juxtapositions of wild and controlled areas.

Three waterfalls by Toshio Shibata transform rushing water into cottony white curves; the most abstract image in the show peers straight down the face of a waterfall, turning the perspective upside down. (A recent Shibata book review can be found here.) And DoDo Jin Ming's negative prints of a faded sunflower field become a post-apocalyptic nightmare, complete with dark shadowy figures; her typology of pyramids plays with size as well as color, all variations on the simple triangular form.

Overall, this is a solid group show that highlights relevant work by each of the photographers included; the thematic construct is a bit thin, but the work itself is consistently well crafted.

(As an aside, for those of you who are familiar with the gallery space, the overall size of the display space has recently been reduced. What was once the second gallery room is now a private viewing space, and a door on the far side of the entry has now been closed off.)

Collector's POV: The prices for each of the four photographers in the show are as follows:

• Peter Bialobrzeski: $1500 for the small prints, $7500 for the Lost in Transition prints, and $15000 for the Heimat print
• Stephane Couturier: the prices were $7500, $15000, and $35000, based on ascending size
• DoDo Jin Ming: the group of 12 prints is priced at $10000 total, the Free Element print is $16000, and the two images from Behind My Eyes are $15000 and $10000
• Toshio Shibata: the small black and white print is $6000, the larger black and white is $25000, and the color image is $10000

There has been very little secondary market activity for any of these artists, so gallery retail is likely the best option for collectors in the short term. While none of these works is a great fit for our collection, I particularly enjoyed Shibata's look down the steep face of a waterfall (black and white) and Couturier's view through a crumbling light blue building (reminiscent of Gordon Matta-Clark).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Peter Bialobrzeski: artist site (here)
• Stephane Couturier: NYTimes review, 1999 (here)
• DoDo Jin Ming: NYTimes review, 2002 (here)
• Toshio Shibata: artist site (here)

The Abstracted Landscape
Through November 14th

Laurence Miller Gallery
20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Book: Landscape Shibata Toshio

JTF (just the facts): Published in 2008 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Ryoko Yomiuri Publications, in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name. 84 pages, with 74 images. Includes essays by Iizawa Kotaro and Fujimura Satomi, selected exhibitions and bibliography, and a list of public collections. (Cover shot at right, via Japan Exposures.)

Comments/Context: Not to be confused with his two monographs with similar names published by Nazareli Press (linked below), this volume is an exhibition catalogue of Japanese photographer Toshio Shibata's 2008 show at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, collecting together a sample of his recent color work, as well as selections from several earlier black and white projects going back to the early 1980s. So while not quite a retrospective, it certainly is an excellent overview book for those who want to get a broad understanding of his photography.

Unlike the many Japanese artists who have celebrated the natural world and its spiritual qualities, Shibata has focused his attention on the man made structures that have been introduced into the landscape: roadside retaining walls and concrete barriers, webbing to catch falling rock, terraced dams and reinforced reservoir spillways. In many ways, he has adapted the ideas of the New Topographics photographers of the 1970s (Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, et al) for his own environment, challenging the established notions of what a Japanese landscape should look like in the process.

His works in black and white are full of vaguely organic but unidentifiable geometric forms, stripes and checkerboards, zig-zags and chevrons, draped over the undulating land like chain mail, often with tufts of greenery growing from between the cracks. Water also plays a large role in these pictures, either tumbling down the face of a dam in frothy waterfalls, or pooled in reservoirs and man made lakes. And yet these images look nothing like anything you've seen anywhere else; they seem to be unique civil engineering solutions devised for the problems of Japanese construction, now suddenly more visible, as opposed to being consciously overlooked. Shibata has cropped out both the sky and horizon, drawing our attention to the details of the concrete, posing questions about man's interaction with nature and about the traditional definitions of landscape beauty.

The recent large scale color images tackle this exact same terrain, almost as a rephotography project. Many of the same structures that we first saw as stark black and white contrasts are now softer, more real, in their neutral earth tones of tan, green and brown. The same underlying issues are of course at work here, but the integration of nature and the man altered landscape is more subtle, and arcs of color add an additional element of form to the compositions.

A final group of early night pictures from the 1980s round out the book. These too seem indebted to the New Topographics photographers, as Shibata has singled out roadside hotels and restaurants, toll booths and gas stations, centering on the flat horizontals of the architecture and road, lit by pinpricks of light in the enveloping darkness.

Overall, this volume is a solid introduction to the work of an important contemporary Japanese photographer.

Collector’s POV: Toshio Shibata is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery in New York (here), Gallery Luisotti in Santa Monica, CA, (here, on artnet) and Tepper Takayama Fine Arts in Boston (here). Shibata's work has very little auction history, so gallery retail is likely the best bet for collectors who wish to follow up. There are quite a few of Shibata's black and white concrete patterns that would fit well into our city/industrial genre; we just need to spend some time looking at a number of prints to find the one that matches our collection best.

Transit Hub:

• Artist website (here)
• Profile on Polaroid website (here)
• Reclamation, 2006 @Laurence Miller Gallery (here)
• Landscape and Landscape2 @Nazraeli Press website (here)