9. Setsujitsu (Ripping the Truth) (New work)
From very early on in his career, Araki experimented with snipping and cutting his work and creating collages with it. The Setsujitsu works, in which the artist has cut up countless prints of his and rearranged them into collages, are his latest in this experimental vein. Araki speaks of cutting up and creating collages as generating the same sensation as pushing the shutter of the camera. The title Araki has chosen here is a complex cluster of allusions, which suggests an opposition to the idea of photographs as capturing the truth (shinjitsu), instead cutting or ripping the truth to become setsujitsu (compelling). The word also echoes the word “setsunai,” meaning sad or melancholic.
Setsujitsu (Ripping the Truth), 2017
Setsujitsu (Ripping the Truth), 2017