Vacant space is the subject -- and the content. Chie Yasuda's exhibition at Taro Nasu Gallery is a pallid, melancholic affair of photographs of empty, vacant spaces. Quite clearly some of these places -- the three largest photographs were taken inside the desolate, tiled interior of a ruin flooded with water somewhere in Portugal -- have been vacant for quite some time. These ghostly pale shots are beautiful in the lonely way that all photographs of deserted ruins are, and therefore are instantly picturesque by sheer virtue of the romantic setting. The grass growing through faded tiles is certainly pretty, and it is easy to imagine sad, wispy spirits wafting through the watery air.

"Air" is the operative word, since this photographer is interested in portraying aspects of air, not light -- albeit the photographs are in fact drenched in light, which bleaches out that space and makes everything appear to be floating. In a weak attempt to invent a new photographic language the "light" turns into "air," but it is actually the light that bleeds out image and color.

It is just, unfortunately, a tad unexciting and not so removed from tourist-with-a-sensibility snapshots taken with a good camera. Coming from an artist, we are expected to sigh and ponder nature taking over man-made structures, temporality, emptiness, desolation -- or even boredom.

The three opening works -- slightly smaller shots of grass and fences in neglected public spaces photographed through windows -- were taken in Tokyo, but the location could be anywhere. These too convey a sense of idle emptiness. It could be theorized that these are a pensive look at the urban outdoors -- abandoned and gone wild -- from inside. Looking for other mental dichotomies, the viewer could conjure up fictions of life and death, abandonment and security, fullness and emptiness, and so on and so forth. But the inspiration for this kind of nonsense is thin.

The blurred images of weeds growing through fences, are, in the end, just that. Never mind that they were obviously loaded to mean so much more, since Yasuda was chosen by Nasu to "bridge the conceptual gap between photographs and art." The gallery owner explained this at Yasuda's opening, packed with the art literati who were killing two birds with one stone: The Tomio Koyama opening for the young discovery Mika Kato, whose ingenious doll paintings were stunning one and all, was just down the hall.

Is the gap between art and photography a significant one? Whatever gap there may be, this photographer is not going to bridge it.

Incongruously, the last two photographs of blood-red walls and ceilings of what could be a temple in Turkey are bright, colorful and solidly present. The spaces appear to have been recently inhabited, although no one is around. Maybe the tourists were asked to vacate the space, or maybe it was too early in the morning for anyone to be there. With no inside/outside duality for the aesthete to ponder, these photographs sit oddly detached from the plaintive theme of the rest of the exhibition.

This is a pretty, sad show. Nothing gripping here, just a lot of emptiness made ephemeral and bittersweet. Passion? Forget it. This is the world of an art photographer with some kudos and a couple of new concepts to transform the photograph of a place into a meaningful picture -- but it has all been done before, and with a lot more grit. Yawn.