The exhibition will feature the latest works of Todo, who moved from Japan to Europe more than ten years ago and is now based in Dusseldorf. The exhibition title is taken from one of the displayed works, which suggests an interesting relationship to the 1982 project titled 7000 Eichen from Documenta 7, where artist Joseph Beuys planted 7000 oak trees and set up basalt rocks. Our exhibition will explore Todo’s attitudes towards the relationship of fine art to society.

Two years ago, the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery held an exhibition titled Nichijo / Bachigai (Everyday Life / Another Space) Other than this, however, there have been few opportunities to see collections of Todo’s works. His most familiar pieces are cut stones flanking layered glass, which display a great aesthetic beauty while also revealing the profound concepts that lie behind them. The artist selects the stones on walks through historic landscapes, such as Berlin or the Normandy Coast. He makes his inventions by inserting glass—a material with a different expression and temperature—thereby provoking our imagination into considering the historical connotations that lie beyond the objects’ surface and form. In the upcoming exhibition, various forces will react with each other within the spatial installation of the stones, thereby creating a new magnetic field altogether.

For the first time in Japan, this exhibition will include drawings by the artist that reveal his everyday routine. Also on display will be works where he has is inserted glass into books—thereby demonstrating the existence of a consistent concept running through his works, even when he uses materials that are quite different from stone. By replacing the content of books (which inform us about thoughts or the state of the world) with glass— whose transparency reveals the letters lying underneath—the heaviness somehow encourages viewers to ponder the relationship between the books (each of which was thoughtfully selected and installed in position) just as carefully as they would interpret the world at-large. Here, we sense that the artist’s actions of selection and intervention—as well as our own actions of interpreting the world through his exhibited works—have allowed the fine arts to forge a tangible connection between ourselves and society in its rawest form.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

- Toshio Kondo, Art Front Gallery