Process of Blowing Flour

2010 - Photography (Photography)

Koki Tanaka

location: Los Angeles, California
year born: 1975
gender: male
nationality: Japanese
home town: Tochigi, Japan

Tanaka’s unique understanding of objects and materials is reflected in the four photographs that document his Process of Blowing Flour . The images depict the gradual blowing away of a plate of flour held by Tanaka. Because his pose is static throughout the images, his presence is deemphasized and instead the viewer’s attention is drawn to the motion of the flour. The subtle contrast between the fixed and the flowing generates a sense of time and ephemerality, suggesting the infinite possibilities of chance to alter our inflexible perceptions. The aesthetic quality of the flowing flour also evidences the ability of the simplest gesture to generate spectacle.


Koki Tanaka is part of a generation of Japanese artists whose work responded to the economic recession and limited opportunities that beset their country in the early 2000s. Instead of creating monuments, these artists focused on everyday life, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary by stimulating moments of perceptual awakening. Their social critique was enacted through the spectacular and unexpected combination of materials, humor, and simple actions. Working primarily with found objects and video, Tanaka’s practice reveals hidden links between object and action.


Colors:



Other related works, blended automatically

Walking Through
© » KADIST

Koki Tanaka

2009

Walking Through is one of a series of videos—sometimes humorous, often absurd—that record the artist’s performative interactions with objects in a particular site...

Hako
© » KADIST

Hiraki Sawa

2006

Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled...

Stone Deaf (Drawing)
© » KADIST

Milena Bonilla

2009

Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

Untitled is a work on paper by Martin Kippenberger comprised of several seemingly disparate elements: cut-out images of a group of dancers, a japanese ceramic vase, and a pair of legs, are all combined with gestural, hand-drawn traces and additional elements such as a candy wrapper from a hotel in Monte Carlo and a statistical form from a federal government office in Wiesbaden, Germany...

Untitled (Wheelchair drawing)
© » KADIST

Edgar Arceneaux

2006

Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat...

Exquisite Eco Living (executive Properties series)
© » KADIST

Vincent Leong

2012

The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...

Tarantism
© » KADIST

Joachim Koester

2007

Tarantism is the name of disease which appeared in southern Italy, resulting from the bite of a spider called Tarantula...

The Transparencies of the Non-Act
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1)
© » KADIST

Cerith Wyn Evans

2008

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...

The Magic Mirror of John Dee
© » KADIST

Joachim Koester

2006

Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years...

Lift with care
© » KADIST

Hu Yun

2013

This research-based artwork acts as a memorial to early twentieth century European exploration of China...

2012.3.24 Kesen-cho
© » KADIST

Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan...

2011.5.1 Yonesaki-cho
© » KADIST

Naoya Hatakeyama

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan...

Untitled (Family Project)
© » KADIST

Motoyuki Daifu

2010

Seven family members and a cat all squeezed into the small five-room house, where Motoyuki Daifu grew up in Yokohama...

Nothing New
© » KADIST

Oded Hirsch

2012

Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...

Hand Palm Echo 1
© » KADIST

Christine Sun Kim

2022

Hand Palm Echo 1 is a digital animation based on Christine Sun Kim’s staircase mural at The Drawing Center in New York (10 March – 22 May, 2022)...

Armless
© » KADIST

Chloe Piene

2005

The figure in Armless tapers away...

Spaceship sketches of The Lemurian
© » KADIST

Yin-Ju Chen

2011

This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...

Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta Series
© » KADIST

Wimo Ambala Bayang

2011

Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia...