Artist : Youki Hirakawa
Title : A Candle
Medium : single channel video with sound


ENQUIRE ABOUT THIS WORK



In the video work ‘A Candle’, the candle is laid down on its side, where it burns faster than usual so the wax melts and draws a form denoting the path of time passed. It is a poetic work that the artist acknowledges as showing his concern with ’the way that time seems to be leaking in the chaos of the modern world’. Quietly bringing into question methods by which we may be speeding up the processes of personal, ecological and spiritual combustion. There is a deep spiritual connectedness present in this work. Youki Hirakawa’s vision shows a profound awareness that everything has a duration, but this vision has at its own burning heart, a secret fire - an awareness of the alchemist’s gnostic yearnings for immortality or renewal. Through shifting our perceptions of time, we become more aware that all things are connected, and in that, there is hope and faith that perhaps all remains eternal.

Through his still and installation-based video artwork, Youki Hirakawa explores a mysterious and immeasurable sense of time, loss and longing inspired by archaeology, geology and alchemy. His monochromatic imagery is imbued with a melancholic quality, reconnecting a fragile past with a vivid present casting questions over the future. He creates a kind of video-poetry which summons the voice of the lost. Deftly contrasting static imagery or narratives contained within the subject, resuscitating sensibilities that may have since been obscured, primarily through progressive human activity. and moving footage, his work recalls its basis in frames per second, through which Hirakawa questions and in turn plays with our sense of time. Hirakawa constructs his artworks as if to reveal hidden memories or narratives contained within the subject, resuscitating sensibilities that may have since been obscured, primarily through progressive human activity.

Hirakawa is a Japanese contemporary artist born in Nagoya, Japan in 1983. He currently lives and works in Toyota, Japan, following a long residency in Berlin, Germany. He was invited to show at the ‘48th International Film Festival Rotterdam’ and ‘65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen’ in 2019 and has held solo exhibitions internationally, including Ando Gallery, Tokyo, Double Square Gallery, Taipei, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig, Minokamo City Museum, Japan. Hirakawa has also been invited to exhibit in international art festivals including Digital Art Festival Taipei 2017, International Contemporary Art Festival Kaunas in 2016, Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 and Aichi Triennale 2013. His inaugural solo exhibition ‘Secret Fire’ at Anima Mundi was held in 2016 and his follow up ‘A River Under Water’ in 2018. In 2017 he was finalist of Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Works are held in numerous public and
private collections.



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