His second solo show at our gallery, since "Marginal Village" in 2008.olo exhibition by Shoin Kajii (b. 1976) who announces the latest photo works.

When he entered the art scene with his NAMI (wave) series in 2004, the overwhelming power and beauty of waves created great sensation in the photography world, and the series have been continuously admired by people all over the world. 6 years from the debut, the subject Kajii chose for his new series was KAWA (river), the most familiar elements to human-being from the early times, yet shows variety of features through its long journey from a mountain to the foot, then finally becoming one with the grand sea.

While being a monk, Kajii has been photographing waves in Sado, his home town. One day, he encountered a small stream - taking this as a start, he also started photographing rivers, fascinated the fresh aspect of it flowing in one direction, while waves come in and out. Since then, he traveled around the world to shoot rivers, from the Igazu Falls, to China, Australia, Canada, Morocco, among others, in the past 6 years.

As Kajii says, the time for shooting was something shares the nature with chanting a sutra as both require to get concentrated and to face to the essence of nature. In Kajii's photographs, the figure of rivers present every different forms of flowing water, revealing the very core of the nature. Evoking the eternal, ever-changing flow of time, this show "KAWA" will take the viewers to a journey together with Kajii's rivers.

Syoin Kajii profile
Born in Niigata, Japan in 1976. Lives and works in Niigata. Graduated from Koyasan University in Mikkyo (Esoteric Buddhism) in 1999. Started taking photograph in the age of 16. After having served Buddhist apprenticeship at Koyasan (Mt. Koya) from 1995 to 1999, traveled around the world, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thai, Papua New Guinea and U.K., for photo shooting. In 2004, he was awarded the 1st FOIL Award for his series of pictures in which he took a succession of waves on a shore in Sado. Following the FOIL Award, he published photo book NAMI and was awarded the Rookie of the Year 2005 by The Photographic Society of Japan for this overwhelmingly energetic and spiritual book. His another project of photographing rural places suffering from serious depopulation, has published as "Marginal Village" (FOIL) in 2009 and he was also awarded by The Gotoh Memorial Foundation for this achievment. While working as a monk of Singon Sect in Sado Island, he's been actively working as a photographer.

* The text provided by FOIL GALLERY.

Opened dates: September 17 - October 16, 2010