Hayahisa Tomiyasu

Presented during the Biennale Images Vevey in 2020 with the project TTP, Hayahisa Tomiyasu returns in 2021 with a new body of work. He observes the city through its grey zones—ordinary situations whose meaning is not immediately clear. Misaligned clocks, leaning poles, or displaced urban signs become cues that guide his movements through public space. Created between Zurich and Rome, 10” Rome / 10” Zürich is a video work composed of photographs shown as a double projection. During the first lockdown, Tomiyasu began systematically searching for numerals in the urban environment, walking along predefined streets. Each number from 1 to 10 appears for one second; the full work lasts ten minutes. More than a comparison between two cities, the piece reflects on the perception of time, stretched and compressed at once. For Images Gibellina, the project was conceived as a site-specific installation across multiple exhibition spaces, allowing this shared rhythm of time to unfold spatially and collectively.

While studying in Leipzig, Germany, Hayahisa Tomiyasu took a series of photographs from the window of the small 8th-floor flat he rented. For his TTP series, this Japanese artist focused on what was happening on and around a Tischtennisplatte (TTP) – a ping-pong table – just across from his student lodgings. As the days went by, he observed the range of things people did there, far from the primary function of playing table tennis. People used the table for sunbathing, hanging out their washing, having lunch with their family, doing exercises, taking shelter… Hayahisa Tomiyasu spent five years documenting this meeting place, noticing how it was used differently depending on the season, and how it reflected the peculiarities of human behaviour, our social habits, and human ingenuity when it comes to using an object in a totally unexpected way. This series is presented in a public park, on and around a ping-pong table that residents of a nearby home for the elderly can observe from their rooms.