Tokihiro Sato

Originally uploaded by .Kerri..

I didn't know of this artist's work until 2 weeks ago, but the Art Institute of Chicago has been showing an exhibition of his photographs and Jeff and I have been totally enchanted by them. Tonight Sato gave a lecture which, as it turned out, was given in Japanese, minimally and abstractly translated. I felt the auditorium growing frustrated with his 10 minute monolgues which the translator would distill into a few vague sentences. They exchanged jokes, he made animated gestures while the rest of us were left to ponder the slides of his images. At times he even moved the cursor arrow over a section of the image, apparently expounding upon it in great detail. I don't know which I enjoyed more- his images, and the sense I gathered of him as an artist who insisted on the work as sculpture of space and light, and primarily interested in process, or the hour and a half of language set adrift. Rightfully, it left the work to speak for itself. In the Q&A, anxious faculty of the School of the Art Institute pressed to know what the reflections of light "represented" to him: fireflies? marching pieces of string? Perhaps shielded from further insistance by the language rift, he was nevertheless steadfast: Representation is not his intention. All they represent is where he stood shining a light into the camera.