In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. The album comprises original negatives, silver prints, manuscript comments from an anonymous professor, and shows the student’s diligence in mastering the rules applying to the conventional portrait. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography.
The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.
| Title | Kensuke Koike & Thomas Sauvin「No More No Less」 |
|---|---|
| Dates | Thursday 13 February, 2020 – Saturday 21 March , 2020 |
| Site | IMA gallery（Tokyo） |
| Time | 11:00 – 19:00 |
| Closed | Sundays and National Holidays |
| Event | Thursday 13 February, 18:00-: Opening event |
Kensuke Koike
Born in Aichi in 1980. Human imaginations and sensations as his main theme, he creates diverse collages out of vintage photographs. He now lives and works in Italy. Among his recent exhibitions are “To Wolf” (A plus A Gallery, Italy) and “Hi Jane” (IMA gallery, Tokyo). In 2017, he participates at the Guangzhou Image Triennale (China) the series, “No More, No Less”, a collaboration work with Thomas Sauvin. Then on, he has also exhibited his works at his solo show in Postmasters Gallery (New York). In 2019, he participated in the FORMAT photography festival in the UK with his solo-exhibition, “Happy Ending” (QUAD, Derby) as well as the Asama International Photo Festival in Japan.
Thomas Sauvin
Born in Paris. Archivist and publisher specialised in Chinese vernacular photography. Through the collection of discarded negatives from Beijing, he has constructed his unceasingly evolving Beijing Silvermine archive. It is a visual cross-cultural platform which features the collective memories of recent China through found-photos and is one of the largest archival projects in China. He was awarded the prize for the Exhibition of the Year at the Lianzhou Photo Festival in 2013 and took part in exhibitions world wide including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Art, the Ville de Vevey’s Images Festival (Switzerland). The Tate and the Pompidou Centre are a few among many institutions who has acquired the complete corpus of his publications. He also printed many books with renowned publishers internationally such as Archive of Modern Conflict (UK) and Jiazazhi (China) along with his self-published artist books.
