Action Drawing： Diorama Maps and New Work

Since 2003, the photographer has traveled to various cities around the world to create a series of Diorama Maps. To date, Nishino has produced a total of eighteen maps, which includes New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Rio de Janeiro. To produce each diorama map, Nishino spends several weeks at a time in each city to photograph over 10,000 exposures using 35mm film. These images are printed as contact sheets and cut by hand into individual frames, which the photographer then applies to a blank canvas. The resulting collages are at once maps of each city as well as personal documents of his on-foot exploration of every aspect of each destination.

From the Diorama Map series, three works are on view in this exhibition: Diorama Map Tokyo (2004), Diorama Map Tokyo (2014), and the recently completed Diorama Map Johannesburg (2015). The two versions of the Tokyo map are presented side-by-side to show not only the photographer’s development of technique and expansion of scale, but also the development of the city over the intervening ten years. The nineteenth diorama map of the series was shot in Havana during the fall of 2015. The collage work will conducted from start to finish inside the IMA gallery during the exhibition dates. This is the first time the photographer will use an exhibition space in lieu of a studio to complete a diorama map. Also on exhibit is the premiere showing Day Drawings, an entirely new body of work. Comprised of line figurations on a black background, the Day Drawings look like a grand diversion from his standard mode of working. However, the Day Drawings are an extension of the Diorama Maps. Inherent in each map production is movement through a city. The course of movement is determined by the form and shape of the city he is photographing. That fundamental action, reduced to its essence, is the subject matter of these Day Drawings. The lines evolved from individual data points of tracked movement through a city as he moved about and photographed. The Day Drawings are a visualization of that accumulated data, charting his movement, and rendering another profile of the cities that serve as the subjects of his diorama maps.

In addition to previously unseen work and the production of a new diorama map on site, this exhibition also includes an interactive installation called CITIES, videos of the photographer working on location, and also marks the release of photographer’s first photobook.