Eric Tabuchi's Utopark Blurs Photography and Architecture at Les Capucins

At the contemporary art center Les Capucins in Embrun, France, Eric Tabuchi presents 'Utopark,' an exhibition that merges photography and architecture into an immersive landscape. The show features modular installations where images and structures intertwine, including a forged metal gate flanked by wooden stairs leading nowhere, a castle of large wooden cards laminated with building images, a reconstructed breakwater half-covered in black faux leather, and a model of an old diving board. Tabuchi draws from his daily Facebook posts of peripheral urban scenes—wastelands, half-built structures, abandoned amusement parks, and ghost gas stations—to create a hybrid environment that references Alice in Wonderland and Chernobyl, oscillating between enchantment and monstrosity. The exhibition incorporates autobiographical elements, such as a wall drawing of the Japanese flag in negative and a collaborative drawing with Nelly Monnier of a Japanese ship rebuilt by Americans after WWII, reflecting Tabuchi's Japanese-Danish heritage. The work continues his engagement with architectural aberrations, inventory, and melancholic collection, following in the tradition of Lewis Baltz and German objective photography.