Sonoko Sakurai
“ Fifteen Minutes of Fame ”
2016Excellence Award
ARTIST STATEMENT
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
They see a dream. Fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen minutes in the spotlight. Fifteen minutes of paradise.
I started carrying a camera around regularly when I was about seventeen. Invariably, what my camera stows away are things imprisoned. A mannequin in a showcase, a tropical fish in a fish tank, a doll, a plant, a building, ... a self portrait ...
Perhaps I was hoping to free these things by photographing them. Alas, the camera only locks things away in another box. Freedom is never finished; it goes on continually being renewed. We are forever in a box, but very occasionally we catch a shimmer of light.
Entries form: Thirty A3 prints on premium matte paper
Selecting judge: Anna Dannemann
Sonoko Sakurai’s work is full of energy. In carefully composed images the artist assembles a distinctive world populated with eccentric things, details of adverts, and playful object collages. Sakurai’s body of work Fifteen Minutes of Fame investigates the world we live in, using every day items to construct her vivid and multifaceted images she transforms these into new and strange patterns of saturated color and harsh light. Revisiting the image selection again and again, I continuously discovered new narratives and perspectives.
PROFILE
Sonoko Sakurai
Born in 1993
Solo exhibitions
| 2014: | A Room of Five Senses at Turnaround, Sendai |
| 2015: | Related Dressing Room at the Shinjuku Ophthalmologist (Ganka) Gallery, Tokyo Related Dressing Room [a traveling exhibition] at Turnaround, Sendai |
| 2016: | Encyclopedia [an exhibition of drawings] at Birdo Flugas, Shiogama Life Human Travels [photo exhibition] at Turnaround, Sendai |
| Website: | http://maegamiichan.tumblr.com/ |
2016Excellence Award