Noguchi Rika
Rocket Hill
March 29 – April 26, 2003
Opening reception: Saturday, March 29, 6 to 8pm

D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present Rocket Hill, an exhibition of new work by Japanese artist Noguchi Rika. The exhibition consists of ten large-scale digital c-print photographs taken in and around the Tanegashima Space Center, an island complex from which NASDA, the Japanese space program, launches nearly all of its flights.

These photographs continue Rika’s recent investigation of physical spaces where the natural and man-made meet to create narratives of human presence on Earth. When asked why she creates her work, the artist answered: “A sense of mission.” This mission eschews manipulation of the photographs, presenting Rika’s unfiltered sense of wonder at the world of vast, serene skies and heroically-scaled structures. The photographs do not present a single vanishing point, but instead open out onto a flat plane of space that attempts to register equally all that the eye can see.

Noguchi Rika was born in 1971 in Saitama, Japan. She lives and works in Tokyo. Her photographs have been exhibited recently at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the East Modern Art Center, Beijing; and Vedanta Gallery, Chicago. This spring, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco will present her work as part of Time After Time: Asia and Our Moment. A recent monograph, A Feeling of Something Happening, will be available at the gallery during the exhibition.