Hiroyuki Masuyama’s variously sized light-boxes are not simply photographic reproductions of the paintings and watercolours of William Turner. They are instead a conceptual operation on the work of this great English artist. Their subject is the works undertaken by Turner during his first journey from London to Venice. Masuyama has followed each stage of this journey and made visual notes, but in a different medium: in the place of sketches he has used photography. But just like Turner, who brought these graphic notes and reminders back to England in order to re-elaborate them in his studio, so too Masuyama has brought the images he captured back to his studio in Düsseldorf and submitted them to a complex operation of montage. The images of his journey and those of the paintings by Turner have thus become in the luminous work of this forty-something Japanese artist a harmonious unicum in which the limits of space-time have been overcome.
The show will be inaugurated on 15 November at the same time as the great exhibition of works by Turner in the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. For this occasion there will be exhibited in the exhibition space MLB, Maria Livia Brunelli, five light-boxes reproducing five of the works by Turner in the show.