September 20 – October 20, 2007

The selection from the Pola Eros series is Slovenia’s first introduction to the notorious Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Born in Tokyo in 1940, Araki studied design and photography, and, at the age of 32, quitted his job as an advertising agency photographer. Over the following twenty years he published 75 works and became a genuine attraction. His first solo exhibition abroad, entitled Akt-Tokyo 1971-1991, staged in Graz in 1992, marked the beginning of his successful career in the West.

Araki’s Kinbaku scenes are typical of the Japanese inclination towards theatricality, although at the same time this indisputably erotic stimulation may also be an expression of Japanese macho misogyny. Bonded female bodies function as some sort of ‘flesh mobile objects’, which are a means of inciting the sexual fantasy of the (usually male) viewer. The young girls – perfectly groomed and made-up – look like B-movie stars, radiating lust and leisure. The scenes are usually taken in modest interiors what distinguishes them from other pieces by Araki which are taken in the street, as well as in bars, nightclubs, motels and brothels.

The exhibition’s Pola Eros series is complemented by polaroids from the Jamorinsky Flower series which represents some sort of ‘by-serial’ juxtaposition of the theatricality of the main oeuvre. The standard repertoire of Araki’s iconography is rounded off by plastic animals, usually lizards, which contribute perfectly to his bizarre opus.