GROUP EXHIBITION
contact
■ARTISTS
FUJISAKI Ryoichi ｜ Akira FUJIMOTO｜ Aliki van der KRUIJS
■VENUE
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
3-9-11 Minami Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
■PERIOD
August 28th (Friday) - October 3rd (Saturday)
12:00-19:00 | Closed Sun, Mon, National Holidays
※ Autumn Holidays: September 16th (Wed) - 23rd (Wed, National Holiday)
※OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST
August 28th (Friday)
18.00 pm - 20.00
ALL PERSONS WELCOMED.
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to announe a three person exhibition titled ‘contact,’ featuring artworks of FUJISAKI Ryoichi, Akira FUJIMOTO and Aliki van der KRUIJS.
The three participating artists will freely interpret the definition of “photography” in their very own ways by exploring the essential natures of the medium.
FUJISAKI Ryoichi completed M.A. at Kyoto City University Graduate School of Arts, Department of Sculpture. After working as technical director , he began his artistic career since 2015. In his colored oil series, spatial expression by colours are attributed to physical repulsion and attraction of substances. By simply capturing such sceneries with his camera, he prominently exceeds pre-established harmonies and allows its expressions to the naturally occurring.
In his sculpture works, on the other hand, he purely extracts “phenomenons” by allowing misted plasters to simply accumulate. Although his photographic and sculptural works may differentiate in their appearances at first sight, his attitude remains very consistent throughout all mediums ranging from photographic, sculptural and video works. What penetrates there is his pure unrelenting curiosity towards “materials” and “phenomenons,” in other words, fundamental matters which component our actuality in this universe.
2015 © FUJISAKI Ryoichi, couresty KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
Akira FUJIMOTO studied at communication research center FABRICA (Italy), and completed his M.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts. After being assistant at Tokyo University of the Arts Department of Intermedia, he actively has continued exhibiting his artworks in solo and group exhibitions, whilst also organizing SONO AIDA - a project converting vacant urban real estate interests in temporary vacancy into contemporary art exhibition sites.
Although Fujimoto has primarily exhibited artworks utilizing materials symbolizing energy sources of our “modern society” including materials such as asphalt, heavy oil and solar power systems, he will exhibit a brand new body of work in this exhibition which straightforwardly approaches the origin of the word “photography,” literally meaning to “draw with light.”
installation view of Shining Shadow series | 2015 | acrylic board, ink, water | © Akira FUJIMOTO
His new Shining Shadow series purely extracts the relation of “shadow” and “light.” Once when Fujimoto was exhibiting his work at a solo exhibition, one of his friends accidentally found that “a shadow (seemed as it) was shining” inside one of his works. Such accidental incident would be sublimed into a new body of work for its very first time at this exhibition, collecting notably high expectations.
He also will be showing his “Arita Porcelain” works, comprehending the traditional Arita Porcelain with over 400 years history, with a “found photography” like approach.
King Ghidorah (from Drift Collage series)
2014 | arita porcelain | φ390mm | © Akira FUJIMOTO
King Ghidorah (from Drift Collage series) - detail
2014 | arita porcelain | φ390mm | © Akira FUJIMOTO
Fujimoto has been commuting to “ARITA PORCELAIN LAB” in Saga, Arita region over several years, which is the modern brand name of the Yazaemon Kiln and one of Arita’s oldest and largest-scale operating kilns. There he finds various porcelain objects as well as transfer printing patterns, and freely cuts, layers, and reapplies them himself to carefully kiln them one by one.
For example, expressions of “glaze patterns layered on top of each other” would never be found in the traditional porcelains, however, his works would never be limited to such conventional bounds. Instead, it freely connotes multi-layered cultural conceptual values and time axis, embodying itself as a contemporary artwork as well a traditional artifact both at the same time.
Aliki van der Kruijs is a Dutch artist who explores the relationship between colour, culture and environment through photography and textile, depicting nature as a subject as well as material. In 2012
she received her Master’s in Applied Arts from the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. Her works have been exhibited worldwide including venues such as Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), Textile Museum (Tilburg), Ubi Gallery (Beijing), Mikimoto Gallery (Tokyo) and many others. She currently lives and works in Den Haag.
In this exhibition, she will show 6 new works from her representative Made by Rain series, as well as 4 works from Night Rain series where she uses photographic paper as its structural base.
Made by Rain series is an artwork leaving an ink pre-applied silk textile out in the natural rain for a few minutes. By allowing every single extemporaneous natural moments to appear on their own, patterns unique to “that moment/that place/that rain” would remain there, significantly reminding us that each single piece is an irreplaceable monotype object, just alike our everyday experiences which pass by every moment. Each unique cloth is accompanied with its actual precipitation data of location, time and amount of rainfall.
On the other hand, the Night Rain series may be the same in its production method by leaving the materials out in the natural rain for some seconds, but what fundamentally differentiates is that “photographic paper” is used as its base material. A layer of “tissue paper” is placed on top of the photographic paper, which at times leaves not only unique patterns but also unique textures to the artwork. What appears there is a brand new photographic approach with the conventional photographic paper material.
One of the broad interpretation of “photography” is that it is an evidence of substances directly being in “contact” - either optically or physically - which had been advocated by the famed critics for example Rosalind E. Krauss and many others.
We hope the traces of our world interpreted by the three participating artists would find you highly intriguing and inspiring in their own way.