RENATO D’AGOSTIN
TOKYO UNTITLED

May 6th - June 11th 2011

Techincal Info

Opening: May 5th 2011 from 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm
Location: VISIONQUEST gallery Piazza Invrea 4 r, 16123 Genova, Italy
Tel.:  +39 339 7534993 +39 010 2468771
Opening times: Wednesday - Saturday  3.30 pm to 7.30 pm or by appointment
Email information: info@visionquest.it

The photographer will attend the opening reception

After New York, Paris, Tokyo and Milan, the book  "Tokyo Untitled" with an afterword by Ralph Gibson and Eikoh Hosoe, will be presented.

Press Release

After two years Renato D'Agostin returns to Genoa with "Tokyo Untitled". A black and white Tokyo where man and everyday life are seen through the views created by architecture, where the geometry of the spaces sets the pace of the photographs, D'Agostin moves away from stereotypes by eliminating the recognizable elements of the metropolis and guiding the viewer into a surreal atmosphere.

 “It seems to me that the Renato D’Agostin’s “Tokyo Untitled” is a record of the aura of a past Tokyo. It’s impossible for me to recognize that his photographs of Tokyo were taken recently … however, Renato’s Tokyo is today’s Tokyo.”
Eikoh Hosoe

“Tokyo Untitled is a perfect name for a place in the mind. A place that can only be accessed through the eyes; a visual place. Depending on who you ask, Tokyo is the largest population of any city in the world, around 28,000,000 citizens. Thus the need for the wall in the mind as a place to find a little privacy. This wall in my mind becomes a large screen upon which are projected these few dozen photographs made in a place that is convoluting and modulating even as we read these worlds. It will never stop expanding or contracting according to its own design. Other cities are enormous in other ways. Sao Paulo or New York all have their sense of proportion. But Tokyo is enormous because it is Untitled. These images are the thinnest possible slices of inconceivable urban density. Slices so thin that they must be measured in fractions of light, tiny microscopic moments of DNA in time taken from the huge archaeology of a true metropolis. Like all true ephemera, these photographs are mere synapses of a place where each person on the street carries their own secret compass, drifting around at warp speed in search of their own true north from the very source of the East. Everybody knows that Italians are great explorers. Perhaps this one went farther than he expected, directly into the light, into a fascinating and surreal city, not so much science-fiction, more like science-fact.“
Ralph Gibson
(in the ocean) – July 26, 2009

Technical info

Black and White Siver Gelatin Prints executed by the photographer.
cm 30 x cm 40  ed. of 25
cm 40 x cm 50  ed of 10

Biography

Renato D’Agostin was born in 1983.
He starts his career in photography in Venice, Italy in 2001. The atmosphere of the city life nourished his curiosity to capture life situations with the camera. For this, in 2002, he journeys through the capitals of Western Europe. Back in Italy he joins the Istituto Italiano di Fotografia in Milan, and works with the production studio Maison Sabbatini.
In 2005, he attends the International Center of Photography in New York for courses in Fine Print. Soon after, he becomes assistant to Ralph Gibson.
In 2007, he presents the exhibition “Metropolis” at the Leica Gallery in New York, followed by major galleries in the United States and Europe. In Metropolis, the notions of time and space become transfigured, freeing surreal and oneiric images related to the emotional depths of our collective unconscious, a space he is  able to investigate with intimate subtlety.
In 2009, he presents Tokyo Untitled, with afterwords by Eikoh Hosoe and Ralph Gibson. The book and exhibition were presented at Galerie Photo 4 (Paris), Leica Ginza Salon (Tokyo), Leica Gallery (New York), and FORMA International Center of Photography (Milan).

In collaboration with mc2gallery