Imura Art Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of Balance Parameter , a solo exhibition of Takayoshi Tsuchiya on 17th September, 2011 at imura art gallery, Tokyo.
From the beginning of his career at Tokyo University of the Arts(oil painting major), Takayoshi Tsuchiya has developed his works utilizing multiple mediums such as motion video, photography, two-dimensional image, three-dimensional object, installation and digital technology, which always has been leaded by his question : Isn’t there something I shoul d do before I start making paintings?.
Minimalizing the artificial control over ready-made items, Tsuchiya’s works, defined with sophisticated accomplishment, crosses the boundary of precedent rules o f art and reveals somehow soothing discomfort to you.
Upon his first exhibition at imura art gallery, we are going to present his works produced with various mediums from the past to the latest days, and display t he vision of the world of his creation.
Parallel with the exhibition, the gallery is going to have talk show wi th a guest, Kiyoshi KUSUMI (associate professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University), whereat the artist and the guest address the very original attraction that Tsuchiya’s works hold.
It is going to be held from 6.p.m. on 17th September 2011.
Kiyoshi KUSUMI
Art editor. Art critic. Associate professor of Tokyo Metropolitan University.
Born in 1963. Graduated from Gakushuin Univeristy, faculty of letters, philosophy department (art history major). Comickers Chief Editor (1995-98). Bijutsu-techo Chief Editor (2001-04).
Visiting Professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design(2006-07), Currently Associate Professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University.
Specialized in contemporary art, media studies, publishing＆editorial studies, cultural studies of 20th century.
Artist Statement
It is said people tend to see the world as they wish to see it, which indicates the positive perspective of the possibility that people CAN see the world as they wish t o see it. My interest lies in this flexible nature of people’s perception and the emergence of the world through perception. My installation is a repeated conduct of exploring the relation between perception and the world. This is not about seeking the truth, but rather executing simple practice with the question; how could we restore the way the world appears to us?
Dom Perignon, a measure, pruning of plants, eraser, a bowling game, an Othello game, sea bathing, a football ground…
Those are subject matters used in my installations. You might not be able to find common attributes among them; however, they are all fragments of the world clipped off by my percepti on. And I believe the coherency of my way of perceiving each material’s system would establish the causality between them. This functions as eyes to reveal the parameter of the delicate balance and tension which sustain this world.
Being produced with this manner of attitude, my works are not c reated with particularly exceptional way and it may look sterile. But to me it always seems the smal ler your baggage is, the more direct you can view the world.
- Takayoshi TSUCHIYA
Managing to measure the immeasurable universe
Kiyoshi Kusumi（Art critic / Associate professor of Tokyo Metropolitan University）
Takayoshi Tsuchiya’s art works are created through manners such as picking up commodities or clipping the daily scenes and people’s acts. It doesn’t even have to be mentioned that the process he adapts to make works, which minimizes artificial control over objects he appointed and gives poetical titles, is an inheritance of Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made. Now 100 years are about to past since Marcel Duchamp placed a wheel of a bicycle on a stool, and we witness Dom Perignon on a platform scale with a tension pole placed between the cork and the ceiling. A set of ready-mades, appearing as peculiar figure as Bremen Town Musicians, is titled “New Balance”.
This is an exact quote of the name of athletic shoes brand originates in Boston with a watchword of “new balance” producing flat-feet remedying shoes. The discovery of this fact leads you to a subtle smile. Furthermore, you would be raptured if you looked into the digital display which makes you think of the gold bubble locked inside with vertical tension.
Ready-made works in 21st century do not possess the destructive acts in their nature that Dadaism did. Duchampians after Neo-Conceptualism from worldwide, including Tsuchiya, inherited humor and wit from their precursor. And thereat modern and stylish sense replace non-sense as criteria for the select of subjects. In the contrast with Pop artists whose motivating force came from complex and obsession with mass production, “Inherited Ready-mades” artists, as against “modified Ready-mades” artists, extract regular objects from daily life and display them as something indicates nature, just as you pick flowers from mountain and put them into vases.
This concept includes the sense which is common with contemporary select shop and product magazine which have strong interest in industrial product design and facility, or remix and editing which are techniques of DJ music and Desktop music.
I could refer to it in another way : as Pop art drew superb panorama of consuming society, both in optimistic and pessimistic way, in 2000’s artists of Otaku generation who started from Neo-Pop drew gigantic panorama of mass media society with subjects of cartoons and animations. At the corner of the art scene, Tsuchiya has been constructing miniatures and physical models of mass media society. For instance, “小さく前へならえ(stand at half of arm’s length!)” (2001-2003) which frames auctioned tickets of historical baseball games and football games and gives smart titles which remind you of sport columns, has got taste and wit of Bonsai and curious stones. As regard to the metaphor in which you see the universe in a stone, however, the less artists’ artificial operation the better.
“Let’s say, you imagine the universe. Then your imagination is pulled back to the edge of universe.” (quoted from Shikou no Kansatsu, work catalogue) Related to this artist’s words, eraser colored black allover with pencil（《Delete》2007） pulls you to the edge of the universe and stand you there with its inframince.
Tsuchiya manages to measure the immeasurable universe. For this purpose he regularly uses tools with scales such as rules, tape measures, balances, thermometers and graph papers. The scales, which measure size and weight of objects, or changing of phenomena, and convert them to numbers, unify the act of measuring and thoughts of measuring.
《1000 Square meter》, presented last year, in which a 1km square graph paper is scrolled on a screen of a computer, is a precise actual size scale-model of space of information that we move around with a computer mouse. At the upcoming work of the actual sized soccer field, the white line on the grass replaces the scales and it will bring the player to the edge of the universe / soccer pitch.
The scales disappeared is now released in the air in the photographic works of 《FLY》. If the flying tape measure fell on the ground, it may become Duchamp’s 3 stoppages etalon, however, in Tsuchiya’s work it is eternally suspended in midair for good. The tape measure is not straightened but drawing unstructured arcs. This might be because it’s attempting to measure the size of the sky.
The artist himself was not even conscious, but the author was reminded of Yoko Ono by this work. The line from Blue Room Event, drawn on the wall with a statement “この線はとても大きな円の一部である(this line is a portion of a large circle) ”, is thrown into the three-dimensional space. The sky is a long-term theme for Ono’s works, and she also made an experimental film with the same title.
I wonder what this peculiar affinity means. Other than that, Tsuchiya’s film work 《二重スパイ(Double spy》》overlaps with Ono’s work of Chess game Play It by Trust. It is perhaps because of Duchamp that those two got similar styles, but they are not the only ones influenced by him.
We need to consider the difference between them to forward the argument. In one game players of black and white switch randomly, while in another game there are only white pieces. They are both an assertion that there is no winner or loser. Yet the result is obvious before the game starts for Ono’s Othello game, when Tsuchiya’s Othello game never ends on the other hand. If they were compared to mathematics, Ono’s answer is a whole number and clear, while Tsuchiya’s answer is a fraction that is indivisible infinite decimal but has a perfect visual balance like that of one third. Or perhaps numbers are not the answer that Tsuchiya is looking for in the first place. To find the answer, we need to get rid of scales that we put absolute trust as criteria of matters. (The title of Tsuchiya’s work “Perfect Job” which is an alcohol stick thermometer without scales shows his quiet claim that estimate by eye or the state of incalculable has absolute superiority over scales.)
If her most influential work is the instruction with a word “Imagine” for its beginning, a key-word Tsuchiya should use to transform the world is 《Delete》. “Imagine” vs. “Delete”. They look like to be the exact opposite action, but actually tell the same claim. (War is over -- if you delete it. )
Now I think of the small black eraser and it looked like a miniature of the familiar unidentified object from a SF movie.
