Tomohiro Muda: Mizu-no-bo "Aspects of Water" | 12 September - 7 October 2016

Erik Thomsen Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition of works by Japanese photographer Tomohiro Muda (b.1956). Best known for images inspired by sites of religious devotion and pilgrimage, for this debut New York show Muda has turned his focus to the natural world with a selection of photographs dedicated to the earth's most abundant natural resource: Water. Tomohiro Muda: Mizu-no-bo "Aspects of Water" will run from September 12 to October 7 at the Erik Thomsen Gallery, 23 East 67th Street.

Muda's highly atmospheric depictions of the omnipresent liquid reflect an individual aesthetic that both conforms to international trends in contemporary fine-art photography and builds on traditional Japanese sensitivity to mankind's natural forces. Conceived as the first in a series of five exhibitions devoted to the traditional Five Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void, Mizu-no-bo features more than 40 photographs that explore water in all its aspects, from the mirror-like surfaces of a lotus pond to dynamic compositions of spray and steam. Muda eschews the merely literal in pursuit of an approach to his subject that almost conveys a three-dimensional effect expressing his bodily experience of water. As noted by leading art-historian and critic Yuji Yamashita, with this exhibition he "seems to be aiming toward a grand summation" of all his previous practice.