Padiglione Giappone

Takahiro Iwasaki was born in the Hiroshima Prefecture where he is also currently based. This solo exhibition presents a selection of three-dimensional works created using everyday familiar objects including towels, books, and plastic rubbish. Characteristic of Iwasaki’s works is his fine handiwork by which he transforms his materials, such as creating steel towers from the threads pulled out of towels and construction cranes from bookmark strings attached to books. His use of these everyday objects draw influence from the numerous artifacts housed in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, conveying the instant changes in the forms of daily necessities as a consequence of the atomic bomb. Furthermore, his use of “figurative representation” can not only be described as a traditionally “Japanese” technique, but is a conscious decision that is based on the significant turnabout in Hiroshima’s position before and after the war, from a military city into a city of peace. Iwasaki’s method of making small interventions to have a remarkable impact on a large scale is that which also relates to Hiroshima’s experience of the atomic bomb, and how the power of microscopic atoms had resulted in the annihilation of the city.

For his works Iwasaki has selected motifs of both old and new buildings in the coastal regions of Japan, including a traditional shrine built above the sea, chemical plants that stand along Hiroshima’s coast, as well as oilrigs. Reflection Model (Ship of Theseus) is a new work based on the motif of a shrine reflecting on the surface of water, however since the reflected image is conveyed without fluctuation, it appears as an unrealistic representation that captures a fleeting and stationary moment in time and space. The fact that the shrine is depicted in its broken state after the typhoon is a conscious decision on Iwasaki’s part, who focuses on how its structure is made to protect its important areas by enabling sections of it to be intentionally destroyed when inflicted with external force, thus eluding any substantial damage. This method of elusion by accepting the circumstances presented is one that can be said to illustrate the Japanese way of confronting nature.

From issues of nuclear energy and the development of resources, to chemical plants that despite supporting the high growth of the postwar economy had been a serious cause for pollution, Iwasaki’s works shed light on the various challenges and situations confronted by Japan’s rural regions, and through them present an image of Japan from a different and distinguished perspective. The exhibition’s title, “Turned Upside Down, It’s a Forest” is in reference to a text written by Venetian novelist Tiziano Scarpa, describing how the city of Venice is built on an infinite number of stakes driven into the lagoon. The exhibition communicates the importance of changing one’s perspective, and invites the viewers to embrace different ways of looking.

Meruro Washida (Curator)

Takahiro Iwasaki per il Giappone

Il sito http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/ segnala che l'artista Takahiro Iwasaki rappresenterà il Giappone, articolo 

Takahiro Iwasaki, a graduate of the Art, Space & Nature – MFA programme at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), has been selected to represent Japan at one of the world’s most important visual arts events. 

Takahiro was selected by the Japan Foundation to show the work entitled “Upside-down Forest” at the Japan Pavilion.

Since graduating from ECA, Takahiro has been based in his native Hiroshima developing a thread of works which began on the Art, Space & Nature programme. Takahiro often uses everyday objects that are found around us as materials for his works. These include items that are regarded as garbage, such as dust, cloth and hair. By overlaying another image onto these to create a figurative representation, he gives meaning to things that are seemingly chaotic. For example, he makes a stack of dust cloths look like the mountains of nature, and books appear like buildings, experiencing a change in the way we perceive things.

Takahiro’s work is characterized by his meticulous handiwork and labour-intensiveness, developing the language of the architectural model. He creates cranes and steel towers from the threads pulled out from dust cloths or the bookmark strings attached to books. The delicacy of the work being stunning features of his ongoing ‘ Out of Disorder’ series.

“When I looked at the cross-section drawing of the Japan Pavilion, I saw that the four pillars rising from the piloti on the first floor served as the walls of the exhibition room on the second floor, and the ceiling of the first floor was also the floor of the second floor. It felt just like a boundary separating the sea and land,” said Takahiro of the work he’ll be producing for the exhibition, “I wanted the visitors to observe Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima, which offers a different view depending on the tides.”

“By creating the different perspectives of looking upward and looking downward, I hope to create a multifaceted spatial experience.”

After completing his MFA at Edinburgh College of Art, he went on to a PhD in Art at Hiroshima City University.

Takahiro’s selection as Japan’s sole representative at this showpiece event for contemporary art is a significant achievement, in an already notable career. Takahiro has exhibited at the Asia society in New York, 2015, and has held solo exhibitions at the Kurobe City Art Museum and the Oyama City Art Museum in the same year. Group shows include the 10th Lyon Biennale (2009), Yokohama Triennale (2011) and the 2013 Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan.

The 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale runs 13th May - 26th November 2017.

Japan Pavilion - abstract speaking - sharing uncertainty and collective acts

Ecco la data dell'apertura del Padiglione del Giappone con il suo ultimo comunicato stampa.

The Japan Foundation is pleased to present "abstract speaking - sharing uncertainty and collective acts," a solo exhibition by Koki Tanaka, curated by Mika Kuraya, at the Japan Pavilion for the 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, held 1 June through 24 November.

Curator's statement

The installation in the Japan Pavilion will probably come across as rather desultory: pillows and flashlights, books, jars and more, placed here and there, with glimpses of photographs and video footage in between. The log pillars and stools are a partial recycling of those used for Architecture. Possible Here?, Japan's entry in the 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2012. Near the entrance, staff overseeing the pavilion display go about their business at a worktable. Thus the photos and videos that would ordinarily occupy center stage as the “works” slip among the furniture and everyday items (the actual objects that appear in the photos and videos), and the staff, as items of equivalent standing. In recent years Koki Tanaka has employed a variety of methods to produce works on the relationality that arises between human beings. For these works, he either 1) sets a specific group a certain task and videos their collaboration, or 2) does something with somebody based on an idea not yet completely formed, and records this in photos and text. Nine hairdressers cutting the hair of one person, five musicians composing on a single piano, five poets writing a single poem, multiple ceramicists producing a single item of pottery—these fall under 1), video footage. In them, it is possible to see the process of people of the same occupation, employing a common language that only they understand, clashing with each other, reaching consensus, and so on (incidentally the driving force behind this process is the question of the division of space between the participants, almost a formal matter). On the other hand, belonging to 2) are what Tanaka calls “collective acts”: experiments of various sorts still lacking a fixed destination, such as talking about one's own name while eating emergency rations, and walking in a large group around the nighttime streets, flashlights in hand. 

On 11 March 2011, Japan experienced a massive earthquake and tsunami, plus an accident at a nuclear power plant.

Two years on, the situation still remains unresolved, an issue that Japanese artists continue to engage with in various forms. Architecture. Possible Here?, presenting a plan to build a house for residents of a town hit by the disaster, was one direct manifestation of this engagement. By reusing part of that exhibition site, Tanaka is attempting to address the same issue, but in a slightly more abstract fashion.

For example, a haircut by 9 hairdressers at once (second attempt) (2010) was shot before the earthquake. But to those of us in Japan now, having gone through such a definitive experience, it seems a metaphor for working together to build a post-quake society. Or take the footage of people going up and down a fire escape with a book in one hand: this recalls the experience of evacuating, and has the feel of an anti-nuclear power gesture (in the sense of rejecting the consumption of electricity concomitant with escalators and elevators). Thus the tasks and acts—at first glance modest—set by Tanaka can be read in different ways according to the viewer's personal context. Having this quality of permitting many different readings, Tanaka's works will, at the geographically far removed Venice venue, provide a platform for the overlaying of yet more, new readings by people. In any case, on entering the Japan Pavilion, with the text “9478.57km” (indicating the distance from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to the Japan Pavilion) added unobtrusively next to the sign saying “GIAPPONE,” even if they are unaware of it, the connections between countless viewers shouldering all sorts of contexts has already begun.

Mika Kuraya - Curator, Japan Pavilion

About the artist

Born in 1975; currently lives and works in Los Angeles. In his diverse art practice spanning video, photography, site-specific installation, and interventional projects, Koki Tanaka visualizes and reveals the multiple contexts latent in the most simple of everyday acts. In his recent projects he documents the behavior unconsciously exhibited by people confronting unusual situations, e.g. a haircut given by nine hair stylists or a piano played by five pianists simultaneously, in an attempt to show an alternative side to things that we usually overlook in everyday living.

He has shown widely in and outside Japan: the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Taipei Biennial 2006 (Taipei), the Gwangju Biennial 2008 (Gwangju), the Asia Society

(New York), the Yokohama Triennale 2011(Yokohama), the Witte de With (Rotterdam) and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). He will participate in "2013 California-Pacific Triennial" at the Orange County Museum of Art in June 2013. 

Artist website: http://www.kktnk.com/

About the Curator

Chief Curator of the Department of Fine Arts, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Mika Kuraya earned her MA at Chiba University. Her recent curatorial projects include: "Waiting for Video: Works from the 1960s to Today" (2009, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; co-curated with Kenjin Miwa), "Lying, Standing and Leaning" (2009, MOMAT), "Meaningful Stain" (2010, MOMAT), "On the Road" (2011, MOMAT), "Undressing Paintings:

Japanese Nudes 1880-1945" (2011-2012, MOMAT). Recent critical studies include: "Where is Reiko? Kishida Ryusei's 1914-1918 Portraits" (Bulletin of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, No. 14, 2010).

  

Artist: Koki Tanaka

Curator: Mika Kuraya (Chief Curator of the Department of Fine Arts, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)

Japan Pavilion opening 29 May 2013 15:30 

Organizer: The Japan Foundation

Venue : The Japan Pavilion at the Giardini

Address: Padiglione Giapponese, Giardini della Biennale, Castello 1260, 30122 Venezia