Defense of Medium: A Note to “Expanded Retina”
MP1 is a group of four artists: Masaru Eguchi, Ryo Fujimoto, Daisuke Yokota, and Kazuo Yoshida. In fall 2011, they held an inaugural exhibition titled “Expanded Retina” at Shinko Pier in Yokohama, as part of the Yokohama Triennale 2011. They are now preparing a forthcoming exhibition and other projects in Tokyo.
In their work, you can find the metaphor of the retina, and of the photograph as its expanded field. Confronted with this image, you might ask yourself what the essence of the retina is. For human beings, the retina is the essential organ of sight—it is, necessarily, always in between us and the world, enabling our vision to connect us to it. When we see something, the retina functions as a membrane of contact between the body and the world. The world remains outside, while the visual system is in charge of bringing visual information into the body and analyzing it there. The retina, which is indispensable for producing visual images, is also the organ that mediates between the world and the nervous system. In other words, the retina is the “medium” of the visual process, the most fundamental of visual media.
This fact is often forgotten in the visual arts, where we often presuppose a dichotomy of impression and expression or realism and expressionism. This dichotomy can be upheld only when you misunderstand the retina as a transparent medium. Eguchi, Fujimoto, Yokota, and Yoshida reject this simplification and resist it in unique ways. In their work, you will not find the pictorial trace of the world, nor the emotional expression of the artist. Their pictures represent the complexity of the world by keeping their distance from “straight photography.” They reflect on the impurity of the retina as a visual medium. This is why their work can be conceived as an “expanded” retina—the essential medium for experiencing the world.
