Nobuyoshi Araki: Les Miserables

Meredith Rosen Gallery is pleased to present Les Miserables, an exhibition of silver gelatin prints by Nobuyoshi Araki from his Kinbaku series. The exhibition will open on December 18th, 2024 and remain on view until January 18, 2025 at 11 East 78th St.
In intensely sexual black and white silver gelatin prints, nude women are tied intricately with ropes in intimate settings often in an expression of both pain and desire. Kinbaku-bi, the traditional art of Japanese erotic bondage, has been one of the most significant subjects for Araki. The exceptional silver gelatin prints in this exhibition were made by Araki in the early 2000s during one of the most prolific periods for the artist. These works exemplify the deeply personal and erotic nature of Araki’s vast output, in images which have been widely regarded as the most transgressive and transformative series in the artist’s multifaceted oeuvre.
Abandoning the boundary between art and pornography, Araki’s images look unflinchingly at the interconnectedness of subjugation, power, death and desire. Often working quickly with a focus on his own life experiences, Araki’s explicit works both shock and emancipate the viewer, inviting a public audience to collectively view taboo or forbidden images. Araki’s images hold this complexity of loss always present in pleasure.
Nobuyoshi Araki (b.1940, Tokyo) completed his studies at Chiba University’s Department of Photography, Printing and Engineering. Araki began his career as a commercial photographer, before making the intensely sexual Kinbaku bondage photographs he became known for. In 1964 he joined the advertising agency Dentsu, where he met his wife Yoko, the subject of Sentimental Journey, a photographic record of their honeymoon published in 1971. Solo exhibitions include “Araki”, Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, Paris (2016); “Ōjō Shashū: Photography for the Afterlife – Faces, Skyscapes, Roads”, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (2014); “Nobuyoshi Araki Photobook Exhibition: Arākī”, IZU PHOTO MUSEUM, Shizuoka (2012); “NOBUYOSHI ARAKI: Self, Life, Death”, The Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005); “Hana- Jinsei”, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2003); “Tokyo Still Life”, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2001); “Nobuyoshi Araki”, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent (2000); “ARAKI Nobuyoshi Sentimental Photography, Sentimental Life”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1999); “Tokyo Comedy”, Wiener Secession, Vienna (1997); “Journal intime”, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (1995); “Akt-Tokyo: Nobuyoshi Araki 1971-1991″, Forum Stadtpark, Graz (1992). Araki is a recipient of the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Arts (2008) and the 54th Mainichi Art Award (2012).