Bettoni’s exceptionally beautiful photographic studies explore the artist’s obsession with life in Tokyo, particularly the paradox of one of the world’s biggest and busiest cities having a centre that is empty and quiet. In his ‘Tokyo Lights’ series, the entire city turns around this central site, which is both forbidden and indifferent to the mass of Tokyo’s population, and contains a royal residence concealed beneath foliage and protected by moats. Bettoni uses Tokyo taxi signs, the blurred lights of speeding cars, and lightbox constructions, to convey the sense of a frenetic urban pace that is both apart and inseparable from its traditional core. Dramatic and compelling, this work was discribed by art critic Guy Brett as: ‘Beautiful: calm amid chaos.’
