Naohiro Harada "The Third Room"

Dates: June 22 (Fri) — July 14 (Sat), 2018

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Zen Foto Gallery is pleased to announce our second solo exhibition with Naohiro Harada, “The Third Room” from June 22 to July 14, 2018. In his previous exhibition “Drifting”, Harada portrayed the flickering of humanity in between light and shadow. This time with “The Third Room”, Harada focused on the subconsciousness of humanity and presented its ambiguity and transience with his saturated color images. They are Harada’s attempt to depict the metaphysical relationships among movement, consciousness and unconsciousness that are quintessential to our daily lives.

The exhibition will show a mix of streetsnaps and photograms hand-printed by Harada. A publication and special limited edition under the same title will be published by the gallery to accompany the exhibition.

This body of work traces movements and thoughts that switch in between 3 different “rooms” inside one’s imagination.

The three rooms are strange and empty,
composed of the following three perceptions.

the first room: the eye
perception of colour through light

the second room: illusion and impression
perception of consciousness - after colliding with time

the third room: the unknowable
perception of nothingness - imagining things cannot be seen that might become visible one day

In this imaginary room that seems to be made of glass,
Things become blue if you think they are blue and red if you think they are red.

This work is like a story depicted by light and senses, gathered from the reality world.

ーNaohiro Harada

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Artist Profile

Naohiro HARADA

Born in 1982 in Tokyo, Harada graduated from the Art and Architecture School of Waseda University in 2010. He held his first solo exhibition “Drifting” at Nikon Salon in Shinjuku and Osaka in 2011, and participated in “Group Exhibition vol.2 HAKKA” at BankART Studio NYK, Yokohama in 2014, and in the same year held his solo exhibition “Drifting” at Zen Foto Gallery. A photobook of the work was also published by Zen Foto Gallery under the same title. In 2016, he had a joint exhibition with Andile Buka at Totodo, Tokyo titled “Remixing Ground”. After publishing a photobook of his colour work “The Third Room” in 2018 with Zen Foto Gallery, exhibitions of the work were held at the gallery and Umeda Tsutaya Books. His work “Tokyo Fishgraphs | 2020”, created during the coronavirus pandemic, received the Libraryman Award in 2022 and a book was published by Libraryman under the same title. Harada is currently based in Tokyo.

Publications & Prints