Hiromasa Iwasaki + Arashi Tanaka "Latent"

Otherwise Gallery presents Latent, a two-person exhibition by Hiromasa Iwasaki and Arashi Tanaka. Not everything around us takes a lasting physical form. The passage of time through a landscape, the atmosphere of a place and the presence of living things often resist being fully captured by what we can see. Though constantly shifting, they remain undeniably present. Working in different ways, both artists explore how traces of these fleeting phenomena might be preserved. Hiromasa Iwasaki examines the relationship between insects and the landscapes they inhabit. In the series Printing Landscapes onto What Was Once Part of the Landscape, photographs of an insect's habitat are printed onto its body, bringing together traces of life shaped by its environment with the memory of place. In Landscaper, landscapes are photographed through holes insects have bored into trees, using them as natural pinhole cameras. By turning attention to photographic phenomena that existed in nature long before humans, the work reflects on the connections between insects and landscape, place and time. Arashi Tanaka works with the natural process of crystallization. Photographs of landscapes and people are immersed in a mineral solution while sounds connected to each image, such as waves or the subject's heartbeat, are played as crystals slowly grow. Atmosphere, the passage of time and a sense of presence, things photography alone cannot fully preserve, become material through this natural process. As the crystals continue to change in response to their surroundings, they quietly evoke the layers of time and life that exist beyond the visible image. Although both artists begin with photography, their works extend beyond documentation or preservation. Instead, they seek new ways of holding onto the relationships and traces that emerge within an ever-changing world. Latent asks what it means to preserve something. Through their respective practices, the artists draw attention to the space between what endures and what fades away, inviting viewers to reflect on the traces left in between.