Marie Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Hiroshi kotani.

In his works Hiroshi Kotani expresses the relationship between the spaces in which humans exist and the passage of time. He catches and forms hazy images that give the impression that they can be seen but then again not, that remind us of something, but not then again not.He does not choose the images intentionally, but rather they suddenly occur to him. Kotani supposes that the images vaguely capture a given moment. The moment reveals the ‘now’. ‘Now’ is a precise concept, but it can also be extremely ambiguous. In the instant we recognize the moment "now", all at once it becomes the past, and the future approaches.

Kotani represents time as lines.　 As well, the lives of humans and the points called ‘now’ are related, tracing a single path as a line. Although, to our eyes, the line appears to be connected, as the line is drawn, invariably it comes to an end. The existence of humans as such means to be born and to disappear. Furthermore, within this there is the flow of things from our ancestors, passing through one human and continuing to another.

For Kotani, both the color black and the color white embody the meaning of the beginning and the end. The existence of each individual color is strengthened by the existence of the other.Kotani believes that ‘now’ is present when two colors are mixed. Kotani has expressed a human oriented space, and shown us its existence. That space exists in an extremely ambiguous place. It is, for example, a space that comes and goes back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness, a space here in which we experience reality and unreality, and shows us a space from which present, past and future are immanent. Humans exist in the middle of the overlapping connections of these different spaces.

This exhibition is made up of pieces, and including the titles, that have more concreteness than before. They are divided into three series; "STILL LIFE", "Imitating Buddha", and "Broken Glass - Tracing Mountains". Kotani is also showing a new series of which the production is limited to a fixed period of time. Time that appears as line floats in the indistinct ground and space.


For further information please check the artist's official website
and contact the gallery at
info@mariegallery.com