mumok is presenting the first solo museum exhibition of Japanese artist Kazuna Taguchi, who has been living in Vienna since 2013. Taguchi’s meticulously composed monochrome photographs convey body fragments, gestures, and gazes that resonate with the surrealist tradition concerning the questioning of the photographic representation of the female body. This can be moments of the phantomic or Yūgen*-like, images that capture a figure in a state between appearance and disappearance.

Taguchi’s works are based on an analog and hands-on approach at the intersection of painting and photography: In an intricate process, the artist combines various visual sources that she paints only to photograph them in various environments and setting that suit the attributes of each painting, and ultimately incorporates elements of chance while manipulating the prints in the darkroom. Taguchi compares the multiple layers and repeated interventions that lead to a permeation of myriad textures, time planes, and narrative spaces to the work of a painter who keeps tirelessly returning to her easel and brush.

*According to the Japanese poet Kamo no Chomei (1155—1216), yūgen is a feeling that is not openly expressed in words, but symbolically indicated by images.

Curated by Heike Eipeldauer

Opening: June 12, 2025, 7 pm