“244” (2014-2015)
本作は、インスタレーション、パフォーマンス、そしてアーティストブックという３つの異なる側面を併せ持つ野心的な作品シリーズである。これまで金沢、ロンドン、そして上海で計5回の展示が開催された。
まずは河野が自身のアーカイブから見つけたファイル名「244」の海の写真を、トリミングを行うことで擬似的に再撮影し、その写真をA3用紙の裏表に印刷、それらは束ねて壁面に打ち付けられる。インスタレーションは横2メートル82センチ、縦1メートル63センチの大型作品となり、来場者がその中から選んだプリントを壁からはがすことで、その全体像は止めどなく変化する。そしてそれらのプリントはその場で河野の手によって製本され、一冊一冊が新たな海景へと変化する。オリジナルデータは制作後に削除されるため、それぞれの展示とアーティストブックはその後再現不可能となる。河野は本作で、止めどない連続と相互作用から構成される「瞬間（Moment）」の姿を視覚的かつ身体的に表現しながら、作品として展示される作品を次々と流通させることで、写真というメディアにおけるオリジナル作品（オリジナルプリント）の概念を大胆にも解体して見せた。
“I’m looking at the sea, where waves break on the shore and retreat incessantly, which makes me feel as if I were looking at a microcosmos of the world; adjacent waves affect each other and configure the whole, then it continues permanently in silence. The idea that “the photograph” is something which captures/cuts out the moment of the past sometimes causes us to slip the fact that it is an object which has its root in the present at all times—this is also the case; the seascape I’m looking at is a picture of the sea I took in the past (looking now), and projecting myself onto it—and this gap between the past and the present is never filled up, yet it is full of possibilities as a media that allures us to an endless journey of thought.
Forty pieces of black and white prints are pinned over the wall and configure single image of the sea. Produced in an automatic manner, each of them has layers of thirteen to fourteen images underneath (five hundred in total); those thin photocopy prints are trembled in the breeze just like waves as people pass by and it opens a vast space of interpretation and meditation for viewers. However, the most important aspect is located on its transformative, performative aspect and it begins to work truly when the performance is taken place so as to visualize its theme: "continuity and transience". In 1971, a Japanese photographer, Takuma Nakahira gave a performance for Biennale de Paris where he extemporaneously put various fragments of images of the city on the wall day by day including reproductions of images from magazines and posters, which was an anarchy experiment to object the idea of finalizing photography as a work/print straight on.2 On the other hand, while 244 pursues the same theme "the continuity and transience of photography" (in other words, presence of the work as an object), it tries to achieve it in the opposite way, by letting the work disappears from the gallery space during the exhibition period. As viewers touch the work and take the images off from the wall, the seascape continuously changes and viewers become conscious how his/her action configures every moment of life. In a way he/she re-recognizes the being of self and others in this world. Subsequently, ten pieces of the prints taken off from the wall are bound by the artist and again, acquire new form: a book.
Photography is a visual based media and thus we tend to focus only on its aspects of record or superficial aesthetics. However as Sontag mentions above, it is same as photography: first of all, the encounter with an image is an experience. It is also same for the artist who produces the work. It appears in front of him as a complete, yet incomplete object in different ways again and again, disconnected from the past which has existed before. Therefore, 244 is an installational piece of work as an apparatus which lets the viewer experience the fact that everything is changing constantly and makes them re-recognize that the involvement of self and others configures the world, but at the same time, it contains very critical statement as a photographic piece of work which broaden the possibility of photography one step ahead: where is the presence of the photograph.” - November, 2014
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2 Kōtarō Iizawa, Takuma Nakahira “Circulation—Date, Place, Events”, artscape, Tokyo, 2012.
“244_2” at Upper Street Gallery, London UK, November 2014
“244” (2014)