Keisuke Shirota "Lacuna or Extension"

Keisuke Shirota (born 1975 in Kanagawa Prefecture) makes visible what lies beyond the field of vision by painting images that extend outward from the edges of photographs. Surrounding the color photographs at the center of each canvas is an expanse of imagery rendered in monochrome. This imagery depicts an imagined, fictional landscape based on the information contained in the photographs. The somewhat abstract monochrome scenery may be understood as a tangible manifestation of the uncertainty of memory. Shirota’s works—in which photographs as documentation (reality) and depicted images as fiction are brought together to form a single composition—are imbued with contemplation of the act of seeing itself. Furthermore, at a time when photography has lost its definition as a medium for recording reality, his works can also be regarded as an exploration of the question, “What is it that we are seeing?” in an uncertain world where fiction and reality intersect. As the exhibition title, Lacuna or Extension, indicates, the blank space—the lacuna—has become a defining feature of Shirota’s works from recent years. The blanks at the boundaries between the photographs and painted sections—the “gaps,” so to speak—delineate the border between reality and fiction. Meanwhile, the margins around the work are created by shifting the image out of alignment. These zones of “absence” dismantle the framing of painting, prompting viewers to imagine what might continue or extend beyond it. This cyclical concept also recurs in his other works. In works composed of two panels, for example, the left and right panels can be interchanged, presenting a form of painting based on endless repetition.