Rika Sugita, curator
"subterranean"- The Consciousness of >>Being on the Inside<<- Gallery Nikko, Tokyo 1998 >>

Ryo Hamada's snapshots, sometimes taken while she is walking, contain blurred, vague images of places such as the inside of her house, or familiar scenes which she passes on her way to the station where she takes the train to work. Therefor, the photographs are all visual fragments cut out from her ordinary, daily life. She does not manifest any specific consciousness or effect in her photos, but takes them ambiguously. In the procedure she follows, she enlarges a two-dimensional photograph that is void of depth, using a color photo copier. She then paints medium over it, and uses the method of dripping. After this process, which creates depths of different dimensions in the picture plane, she attaches it to a wooden panel. By exhibiting her work on a wall, it reverts to its original two-dimensional state. The whole process is like an automatic description extracted from Hamada's hands. The scenes she creates are placed side by side without any connection between them, so the photographs lose any particular memory or record of when and where they were taken. In other words, through this process, in which she incorporates the viewers, her photographs are transformed from her own memories, to common memories and common visual images . As a result, the memories which have drifted and sunk into the depths of our consciousness become visible, leading us to feel that the actions and the experience of human beings, and even the permanence of mankind, are all being exposed to crisis.