Sneaking With Eyes Number One Shut
X-ray Sexysushi
For eight years X-ray Sexysushi has been photographing life as it takes place around him, travelling the world, arbitrarily connecting with locals where the common language of bikes and beer goes a long way. During that time he’s worked with Cog Magazine, Hidden Champion, Loop, Oakley and a selection of other publications around the globe. He’s created a T-shirt with Futura Laboratories and worked with Max Leonard and Andrew Edwards on the book Fixed: Global Fixed-Gear Bike Culture.
With information and photography moving so fast these days he decided it was time to put down something concrete and share all of these experiences in one place. The outcome, Sneaking With Eyes Number One Shut, the current exhibition at Good People & Good Coffee’s gallery SPACE in Nakameguro, a hub for creatives and riders alike. There are photographs taken on both digital and film cameras, but to him that’s missing the point, the medium you use to record the image isn’t what’s important, but that fact that you were there to record something that could only exist right then, at that time, individual layers of moments that make up a life of experience, which is what the work is about.
The arrangement is not chronological, the photographs have their own pace, some documenting the early days of fixed freestyle in New York, others capturing an innocuous street scene at the CMWC (Cycle Messenger World Championships) in Panajachel. The selection of photographs take you on a journey from Japan to Taiwan, through Guatemala, Germany and across the US; Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Hawaii.
These inside glimpses might be worlds apart from most peoples everyday experiences, but they are pictures made without self-consciousness, they have a human element of life being lived that people can connect with, you get a sense that he was not simply an onlooker, but part of the moment, there’s nothing premeditated about them and that gives them a unique emotional power.
The exhibition was held at Good People & Good Coffee’s SPACE Gallery: http://goodpeopleandgoodcoffee.com
