Shigeo Arikawa wants to blind viewers. Or rather: he wants them to realize that even though they have perfect eye-sight they don’t see anything. Every time we wake up, turn our head, even blink, the world in front of us has to be reconstructed based on memories. And in this process of constant reproduction images can easily mutate.
Six years ago Arikawa befriended the recently deceased Takuma Nakahira, a photographer who after having lost his memory radically changed his visual style. At the Van Abbemuseum he recently participated in tours for the blind, which made him realize that an art work doesn’t necessarily have to be seen, maybe doesn’t even have to be present, in order to be appreciated. And then he found a collection of medical portraits on eBay, depicting various eye ailments. The installation for which he used them is called Hangan (Half Eye), a Buddhist term to indicate the simultaneous existence of inside and outside, inner world and outer world. Seeing as remembering.