MISAKO & ROSEN is pleased announce ourexhibition with Naotaka Hiro “Knows Nothing”,May 28 to June 24. Hiro was borin Osaka in 1972. He received an undergraduate degree from UCLA, Los Angeles in 1997 and subsequently received an MFA from CALARTS. Since the 1990’s, Hiro has been based in Los Angeles.

“ Knows Nothing ” starts with the the arti’sts body – and moves, more generally to the artist “himself” of which he is, essentialy, blind; the subject an unknown world. A depressing yet unavoidable fact for the artist is that this/his body is only understandable to himself when considered through the camera / mirror; i.e. in a mediated form.

Hiro created a past film work “Rotating a Skull” in which he documented the process of “getting to know” a human skull through touching it’s various points,learning it’s texture, weight and gaining an understanding of it’s presence. Through this act, Hiro was also able to better comprhend himself in relation to these actions and this base object. In the present exhibition, Misako & Rosen will present a new film skull work in which Hiro attemps an experiment; a reanimation of the skull through the addition of flesh to the object. Where in Hiro’s past work attention was focused on the skull surface and inside, the present work attempts an understanding of an absent, second layer – the flesh or skin. The exhibiton includes a photographic series, “Mass on it” which considers the skull quantatativley as well as the film “Surace on it” which ultimately considers the skin, with the skull itself serving only as a pedestal or platform for further consideration of it’s second surface.

The exhibition also includes two recent photo-collage works from the series entitled “Ass Fall”. Uknown as unseeable, the artist’s ass is photographed and imaginitavely combined with a mythical, fairytale-like image of a waterfall. In this work Hiro references an ancient Japanese story “A Record of Ancient Matters” in which “the word was made by god’s excrement, piss and vomit”. Thus Hiro’s works are connected through an imagination resulting from the his encounter and engagement wth the unknown.