Rika Noguchi (野口里佳 Noguchi Rika, born 1971) is a Japanese photographic artist.

Biography

Noguchi was born in Tokyo and has a degree in photography from the Department of Photography, College of Art at

Nihon University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Japan. Its predecessor, Nihon Law School (currently the Department of Law), was founded by Yamada Akiyoshi, the Minister of Justice (Japan), Minister of Justice, in 1889. ...

in 1994. She has lived and worked as a photographer in Berlin, Germany between 2004 and 2016 and is currently based in Okinawa, Japan. Noguchi focuses on photography of nature, with landscape sceneries and animals. Her frequent use of close-ups and blurred images create an aura of impressionism. Noguchi's work often deals with the limits of human ability and ambition. Her series "New Land" (1999-2000) documented the construction of artificial islands off the coast of the Netherlands. Her series "Rocket Hill" (begun in 2001) recorded the facilities and launch pad of Japan's

Tanegashima Space Center The (TNSC) is the largest rocket-launch complex in Japan with a total area of about 9.7 square kilometers. It is located on the southeast coast of Tanegashima, an island approximately south of Kyushu. It was established in 1969 when the ...

. Her "Sun" series (begun in 2005) shot the sun using a

pinhole camera A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens but with a tiny aperture (the so-called ''pinhole'')—effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through the aperture and projects an inverted image o ...

, emphasizing a very Earth-bound perception of the solar body. Early works include “A Prime” (1997), a series of landscape shots with lonely persons forming undefined foregrounds. She later made “Color of the Planet” (2004) and “In the Desert” (2007) depicting urban and natural landscapes, with colourful blurs and light reflections, inspiring a sense of distance to the subject. Recent works include “The Sun” (2005-2008), a series with the sun as a source of light through a pinhole camera. “I Dreamt of Flying 2” (2009) depicts warped images of the starry sky, the way we would perceive the stars looking out from a spacecraft travelling at the light of speed.

Exhibits

The

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art The was one of the oldest contemporary art museums in Japan. The museum was in the Kita-Shinagawa district, in the Shinagawa area of Tokyo. The building was originally built as a private mansion designed by Jin Watanabe in 1938 for the grandfa ...

in Tokyo held a solo show in 2004 of around 40 of Noguchi's works in, "I Dreamt of Flying." In 2009, Noguchi's work was included in "The Light" at the National Art Center,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

along with Yoko Matsumoto. A solo exhibition featuring Noguchi's “Light Reaching the Future” was arranged at the Izu Photo Museum in 2011. The artist juxtaposed photographic works with

silkscreen Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...

works. A solo exhibition of her work took place in 2017 with the title "At the Bottom of the Sea" at Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo. From October 2022 through January 2023, Noguchi had a solo exhibit at the

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum The is an art museum concentrating on photography. As the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, it was founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and is in Meguro-ku, a short walk from Ebisu station in southwest Tokyo. The museum also ...

Biography

Exhibits

References

See also