#006
Daisuke Miyatsu

宮津 大輔

Chemistry: The Beauty of Encounters 

ARTIST
ONGOING
ARTIST

Ayako Someya, Ueda Sōkyū, Ellen Altfest, Auguste Rodin, Okabe Sōfū, Kuroda Taizō, Niisato Akio, Hayashi Chiho, Fujii Tatsukichi, Mao Guanshuai, Masayasu Mitsuke, Miyanaga Rikichi, Morita Shiryū, Yagi Kazuo, Chihhung Liu, and more.

 

Partners: Ota Fine Arts, Galerie Supermarkt, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, nca | nichido contemporary art, White Cube, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery

 

2023.11.30 Thu. — 2023.12.13 Wed.
ONGOING
#006
Daisuke Miyatsu

宮津 大輔

Chemistry: The Beauty of Encounters 

ARTIST
ONGOING
ARTIST

Ayako Someya, Ueda Sōkyū, Ellen Altfest, Auguste Rodin, Okabe Sōfū, Kuroda Taizō, Niisato Akio, Hayashi Chiho, Fujii Tatsukichi, Mao Guanshuai, Masayasu Mitsuke, Miyanaga Rikichi, Morita Shiryū, Yagi Kazuo, Chihhung Liu, and more.

 

Partners: Ota Fine Arts, Galerie Supermarkt, Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, nca | nichido contemporary art, White Cube, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery

 

2023.11.30 Thu. — 2023.12.13 Wed.
ONGOING

Okabe Sōfū Work 47-8 (Primal Field)

Outline
Date

2023.11.30 Thu. — 2023.12.13 Wed.

(Closed on Sunday)

Hours

10:00 — 18:00

Venue

Shibunkaku Ginza

Ichibankan-Building

5-3-12 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061, Japan

Contact

Shibunkaku Ginza

TEL: 03-3289-0001

MAIL: tokyo@shibunkaku.co.jp

Curator's Statement

Daisuke Miyatsu

In Japan, we have cherished seasonal occasions since antiquity. Shitsurai, the ceremonial process of furnishing and preparing rooms for various seasons, dates all the way back to the Heian period. At the time, the architectural style of shinden-zukuri was open and bare with only pillars in the rooms. Structures such as byōbu (folding screens), misu (matchstick blinds), kichō (portable silk partitions), as well as ōshoji (sliding screens) and toriishoji (sliding doors with overhead torii -shaped pillars), were used as partitions, furnishing rooms for daily or ceremonial use with decor and furniture.

 

Eventually into the Muromachi period an architectural style called shoin-zukuri materialized, and an archetype of the Japanese-style room with a tokonoma (alcove) was born. The tokonoma has been considered sacred since it is said to have originated from raised floors where high-ranking noblemen and lords would sit. Meanwhile, it was also a place where a nobleman would think of various ways to entertain his guests in accordance with the changing seasons based on the Twenty-four Solar Terms.

 

As it is clear from the origin of kagura as a form of divine play associated with spiritual invocation and requiem, Japanese people have long regarded the act of “play” as a contact zone between deities and humankind since the Age of the Gods. In light of this, it is not unusual to consider shitsurai as a form of curatorial practice based upon “homo ludens (the playing human)*1”.

 

With the advent of technology from the West that triggered the Meiji Restoration and accelerated the country’s rapid modernization, traditional forms of Japanese painting such as yamato-e was redefined as modern nihonga. The unparalleled disaster that was the Second World War brought about a drastic shift in values, stimulating the birth of avant-garde calligraphy represented in the Bojinkai collective, or revealing the “age of Hot Abstraction” that led to the kiln-fired objet (obuje-yaki) by the Sōdeisha movement.

 

The traditional techniques of kogei and bijutsu, including their linguistic origins, are changing and it is worth paying attention to the technological concepts and expressions that are currently redefining these fields. Masayasu Mitsuke, a Kutani ware akae saibyo (red enamel glaze) artist, presents a contemporary version of an Imperial Easter Egg, forgoing the craft’s main motif of the land of immortals, and instead utilizing the secondary patterns of yorakumon (motif in aristocratic jewelry) and asanoha (hemp leaf). Niisato Akio’s luminous vessel from the openwork technique of hotarude is reminiscent of a modern-day UFO, identical to the image of the utsuro-bune as described in ‘Hirokata Zuihitsu’ (Hirokata’s essays from the late Edo period). Then there is Ayako Someya’s calligraphy, where universally recognized chemical symbols appear visually ambiguous, their drippings harkening to the characteristic mottled pigmentation of the Rinpa school. Among these artists, from East Asia, the exhibition introduces Mao Guanshuai, whose sculptural touch is modeled after the rare literary connoisseur Kawabata Yasunari’s beloved relic of Rodin’s A Womans Hand, as well as  Chihhung Liu whose twenty-first-century Basho painting seems to capture the dazzling sunlight and moist humidity of Taiwan.

 

The resonance of their work with modern nihonga, avant-garde calligraphy, and kiln-fired objet is an eloquent testament to the fact that shitsurai is not only a playground but also a kind of time machine that transcends time and space.

 

*1: Human beings are “homo ludens=the playing human”. It would not be an exaggeration to say that all cultures that cultivated humankind were born out of and presupposed by “play”.

Source: Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, trans. by Hideo Takahashi. Chuokoron-Shinsha, 1973.

Daisuke Miyatsu

Art collector, Professor at Yokohama University of Art and Design, board member of Mori Art Museum

Born in Tokyo in 1963. Received his PhD in Art Production at the Graduate School of Global Arts at the Tokyo University of the Arts. His background includes working in public relations and human resources management for publicly traded companies before accepting a position as a university professor. As Yokohama University of Art and Design’s third president, he developed reforms that achieved a quick and sharp recovery in the wake of COVID-19. Also brought a new style to the art world as artistic director of Kinan Art Week 2021 and “Fukuoka Art Next Week” 2022 which was different from existing art festivals. He is also known as a world-class collector of contemporary art, and his large collection exhibition Invisibleness is Visibleness (2011) at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei) and the unique collaborative exhibition Emotional Asia (2022) with the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum has attracted much attention.

 

Miyatsu has served as a member of the Agency of Cultural Affairs’ “Study Council on Overseas Dissemination of Contemporary Art” and as a juror for “Asian Art Award 2017” and “ART FUTURE PRIZE 2019”. He has authored, contributed to, and lectured on numerous topics, including, “How Will the New Corona Change Art?” and “Art × Technology Age” (Kobunsha Shinso) and “Contemporary Art Economics—Art in the Age of De-Oil, AI, and Virtual Currency” (WAYTS, Co. Ltd).

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