Comune di Cagliari Assessorato alla Cultura	Centro comunale d'arte e cultura
Satoshi Hirose "A walk among the skies"
"A walk" (2000) cibachrome print and digital print

The walls of a light-blue coloured room are the background/backdrop on which Hiroshe places photographs of skies taken in varying hours of the day, traces of travels in the places of the world, fragments of undescribable immensities which the artist has captured during the last ten years.

The sky is the absolute space of this formal investigation that furnishes the observer a variety of forms, lights and visual cuts which both approach and move away from each other, they separate and they unite following perceptive mechanisms that demand a state of always different concentration.

Two components in reciprocal tension are at work in Hiroshe’s research: on the one hand we have the daily emotion of the landscape, the sensorial impact with the dilated image of the sky while, on the other, there is the rational need to fix within a sole vision all of the crossings and passings of the space which the eye carries out in the immediate relationship with the totality of the blue.

The artist evidences manifold ways of reading the character and nature of the skies: the viewpoint, the closeness or distance from the subject, the form of the clouds, the quality of the naturalistic colours and the intensity of the different atmospheres connected to the characteristics of the seasons.

Each sky bears the indication of the place and year of observation although the specification of the image could also include the month, day, hour, temperature and any other information useful for determining the specific nature of the vision.

What really interests the artist is the result, the formal fruit of the walks, the fact that the skies establish a relationship, the one with the others, in the artificial place of the installation, constructing the sense of a new visual event: that of the photographic interpretation which furnishes the simulacrum, the appearance, semblance and phantasm of the sky. In this sense it is the memory that directs the game: from the infinitely small sky to the infinitely large; from the terrestrial vision to the aerial one; from the movement of the clouds to their total absence; and from the atmospheric conditions at dawn to those of sundown. The sky is always in movement, from east to west, and the eye travels in syntony with the diverse spatial measurements which the photographs solicit on the walls of the installation that in its turn becomes sky, gathering together all the skies: the sky of skies.

Hiroshe’s primary intention is that of exploring the distance between the eye and the sky, of capturing/fixing all the possible perspective points that result from this analysis in such a way as to construct a story (or history) of the sky by way of the chromatic variations which accompany its constant conceptual presence. In fact, for the Japanese artist the concept of the sky represents the possibility of verifying the selfsame language of photography, subjecting it to the pictorial beauty of images, mechanical reproductions and yet able to be enjoyed in the pure sense of colour.

If it is true that in nature mankind only sees what it knows then in Hiroshe’s case the natural truth of the sky becomes a visible trace which establishes a relation with other traces in order to suggest an overall vision in which every element augments the knowledge/consciousness of the sky, and without exhausting its space of reference. Perhaps it is for this reason that Hiroshe entitles the intervention "A Walk", insisting on the act of crossing, passing through space without wishing to represent it in a definitive form.

For the same reason the artist’s way of feeling photography is not strictly analytical but intends in the reader’s mind to arouse a space of emotion in which the subjective memory of the eye discovers (once again) the presence of other skies, other lights and other imaginative thresholds which it is really possible to feel.

In this way the spectator can stroll in Hiroshe’s room of skies dreaming other clouds, other horizons and other sunsets to the point of going beyond the wall, as the artist suggests, also intervening on one of the external walls, almost as if indicating that the sky continues beyond the represented landscape. It is total.

Satoshi Hirose

On having received his diploma at the Tama Art University of Tokyo in 1989, Satoshi Hiroshe travelled to Milan in 1991 to perfect his studies at the Brera Academy for the Fine Arts where he received his diploma in 1997. Since his arrival in Italy he has presented his works in various countries. In both his installations and performances he works on the theme of sensorial perception and space, in the main employing ephemeral materials – flowers, spices, perfumes, lemons, rice, salt and sugar – which are at times combined with marble, fabrics, glass and aluminium. Temporary works which suggest the sense of the ephemeral, such as "Lemon Project 03" created in Tokyo in 1996 in cooperation with the Fondation Cartier of Paris. Although also works that investigate memory and time, like the one presented the following year in Japan in the one-man exhibition entitled "Once". Works in which the artist narrates the ambiguous fascination of uncertainty.

Principal one-man exhibition and installations

1993	"Dipingere sull’acqua", performance, Spazio Via Tosi, Milano.
1996	"Una volta", Recent Gallery, Sapporo, Giappone.
1996	"Desideri un caffè?, desideri una limonata?", performance, Milano
1996	"Ikirareta Tochi", performance, Sapporo, Giappone.
1997	"Luce Rossa", Progetto per ATM, Milano.
1997	"Satoshi Hirose", Casa degli artisti, Milano
1997	"Lemon Project 03", The Ginza Artspace, Tokyo, Giappone.
1997	"Presenza/Eternità", performance, Milano
1998	"Paradiso, Criterium 34", Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, Giappone.
1998	"Percorsi dello Spirito", Cittadella dei Musei, Cagliari.
1999	"Barcheggio", Murazzi del Po, Torino.
1999	"Project A.P.O.", Sagacho Exhibit Space / sagacho bis – Tokyo, Giappone.
2000	"Côte d’azur", BGallery, Tokyo, Giappone.

Principal group exhibition

1991	"Krakow International Triennale", Cracovia, Polonia.
1992	"AFA Augsburg ’92", Augsburg, Germania.
1992	"International Exhibition", La Louvier, Belgio
1995	Little Aperto, Venezia
1995	"Spice Room, Red Room", installazioni, Chiang Mai Social Installation, Chiang Mai, Thailandia.
1996	"Per piacere", Project Room il Corridoio, Milano
1998	"Interni d’artista", Villa Arredamenti, Liscate, Melzo
1999	"Frame", Galleria Biagiotti Arte Contemporanea, Firenze.
1999	"Appesi ad un Filo", En Plein Air Arte Contemporanea, Pinerolo, Torino.
1999	"L’immagine rinnovata", I sotterranei dell’arte, Monte Crasso, Svizzera.
1999	"Più vasto del misurato", Microbo Erotico Projectroom, Milano.
2000	"Tama Vivant 2000", Tama Art University Gallery, Tokyo, Giappone.