During my exceedingly short trip to Tokyo earlier this month, a friend of mine took me on a whirlwind up-and-coming-photography tour of Tokyo. First stop was at the G/P Gallery, in the new NADiff a/p/a/r/t art complex in Ebisu (which incidentally has an excellent art bookstore). They had a small solo-show (14 prints) of the young photographer Taisuke Koyama's entropix series. I had made a mention of Koyama's work in the piece I wrote for Images magazine last year highlighting some of the Japanese photography on show at the 2008 edition of Paris Photo. I didn't get to see enough of his prints at the fair, but I found the couple of images that I did see interesting.
Entropix is a series of visual fragments, seemingly haphazard abstractions that still retain a link to their subject (paint peeling, pink fabric, tarmac, sheet metal). The images are highly detailed, feeling like microscopic, molecular studies of the surfaces of the city. Koyama's compositions are both strong and simple, and they retain an instinctive energy reminiscent of Eggleston's shotgun approach. The (digital) prints are good, although I prefer the smaller prints to the larger edition (1.2 x 1.8m), which I found diluted the impact of the images a bit.
I ran into Koyama later on that evening at a discussion organised by Akira Rachi at CAMP in Hacchobori (more on this later) where he was presenting entropix and had a chance to chat briefly to him. He will be coming to Paris Photo with G/P again this year so this will be a chance to see more of his work. And if you don't feel like waiting until then, a catalogue of the series is also available from G/P. One to watch.