First group exhibition at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, COSMIC TRAVELERS – Toward the Unknown presents the most recent works of Noriyuki Haraguchi, Ataru Sato, Tomoko Shioyasu, Masakatsu Takagi and Go Watanabe.
Not only is this exhibition Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo’s first group show, but also, its first show dedicated to the Japanese contemporary scene. In an artistic and institutional landscape paying increased attention to young artists, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo wishes to present a dissonant but complementary point of view.
Centering around the historically grounded figure of Noriyuki Haraguchi, who firmly embodies the links between Western and Japanese avant-gardes, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo presents artists from two different generations, representing various trends and media.
Selected by independent curator Midori Nishizawa, each of these artists, explores in his/her own way the multitude of cosmic aspects through their respective creative processes. Subjected to their vision of the world, oil, metal, paper, ink and video, become a privileged vehicle of their perception, as well as expression.
In a setting which mimics how cosmic energy travels within the cortex, we literally invite you on a journey from the darkness into the light – a journey which is different each time you come. We won’t tell you any more…Just come back and see for yourself.
For this cosmic experience, all artworks have been conceived for the exhibition, with the support of Noriyuki Haraguchi’s studio, Gallery Koyanagi (Tokyo), SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Yamamoto Gendai (Tokyo), ARATANIURANO (Tokyo) and Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo. Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo is very grateful to all of the artists and the curator for their sustained devotion to this project.
About the Artists
Noriyuki Haraguchi (1946)
Born in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan
Nihon University, College of Art
Starting out as an artist in the late 60s, in 1977 Haraguchi became the first Japanese artist selected for “Documenta 6,” the international art exhibition held every 4 years in Kassel, Germany and his work received critical acclaim. He went on to participate in the “10th Biennale de Paris,” Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France and in 1978 he had his first international solo exhibition at the Galerie Alfred Schmela in Düsseldorf, Germany. Following his solo exhibition “HARAGUCHI” at the Lenbachhaus, München, Germany in 2001 and an exhibition in homage to Malevich titled “Das Schwarze Quadrat. Hommage en Malewitsch,” at the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany in 2007, Haraguchi held his first retrospective in Japan, “Noriyuki Haraguchi: Society and Matter,” and included new works at Yokohama's BankART1929 Studio NYK in 2009.
Ataru Sato (1986)
Born in Chiba, Japan
Advanced Art Course, Department of Information Design, Faculty of Art and Design, Kyoto Art and Design, B.A.
Sato started his career as an artist while still in university holding his first solo exhibition “ATARU SATO: His Sea”, at New York's Mehr Gallery in 2007 followed by “Dorodoro, Doron-The Uncanny World in Folk and Contemporary Art in Asia,” at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan in 2009. Recently he has presented works at the 8th Gwangju Biennale 2010: “10000 LIVES”, Korea, “First Love,” Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo in 2011 and the “YOKOHAMA TRIENNALE 2011: OUR MAGIC HOUR- How Much of the World Can we Know?” where he presented his large-scale universe drawings for the first time.
Tomoko Shioyasu (1981)
Born in Osaka, Japan
Graduated in Art Sculpture from Kyoto City University of Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts
Shioyasu received the “Origin Award” from the Kyoto City University of Art in 2004 for her thesis exhibition and in 2005 won the “Grand Prix” at the 6th Spiral Independent Creators Festival (Tokyo). In 2008 her solo exhibition, “Cutting Insights” at Tokyo's SCAI THE BATHHOUSE received the Gotoh Memorial Foundation's “Gotoh Memorial Foundation Newcomer's Prize of Art” the same year. Recently she took part in the “MOT Annual 2010: Neo-Ornamentalism from Japanese Contemporary Art” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2009 and in 2011 she participated in several international group exhibitions such as the “Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art, 2011” exhibition held by the New York Japan Society and “Terra Incognita: INCHEON WOMEN ARTISTS' BIENNALE”, Incheon, Korea.
Takagi Masakatsu (1979)
Since 2001 he has been engaged in a wide variety of activities, both as a musician and filmmaker, presenting his unique works, which are a fusion of sound and visual imagery, holding exhibitions at art museums and concerts around the world, as well as taking part in film festivals.
In 2001, he gave a live performance at the closing event of the 7th Istanbul Biennale, and in 2002, he embarked on his European live tour, in 18 cities across 8 countries. In 2003, he played a role in David Sylvian's European tour with his video works, as well as collaborating with Tama Art University, Institute for Art Anthropology (Head: Shin'ichi Nakazawa) and RIKEN, Center for Developmental Biology, on joint projects which traverse the boundaries of diverse genres.
In 2009, his documentary film “ARUONGAKU” was shown both domestically and overseas (Canada, Germany and France), and in 2010 he had his first piano solo tour “Ymene”, in which he performed at 7 venues around the country.
Go Watanabe (1975)
Born in Hyogo, Japan
MA Fine Art, Aichi Prefecture Art and Music University
In 1999 while still at university Watanabe, along with 13 others, established “art space dot” in Nishi Kasugai-Gun, Aichi, Japan and embarked on his artistic career. After exhibiting works at the 2005 group exhibition, “very very human” at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art he held a solo exhibition “face” featuring works that would form the basis of his current animations at ARATANIURANO, Tokyo. He has also taken part in “Have you Eaten Yet?: Asian Art Biennial” at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung and has also started drawing attention from outside Japan as well. Recently in 2010, as part of Aichi Triennale, Watanabe presented works from his solo exhibition in “Discovering Contemporary Art 6 Go Watanabe Shiroi Hanashi Kuroi Hanashi” at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya.
Artist Statement:
Noriyuki Haraguchi
Art is one way I have of evaluating and knowing myself.
I am constantly thinking about just how freely I can open up this space and time I am sharing.
The reason I go for a creative method closer to “drawing out the space” and “feeling,” when dealing with the raw relationships between materials, space and the body, rather than focusing on “making” is because it is my intention to try to go back to basics.
Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo's space incorporates various layers of ethereal characteristics; light and shadow, the openness of the space looking outward, and its grid structure. How should I deal with this as a singular situation? I attempted to create not something that cuts into the space, but rather a neutralizing, triangular structure comprised of the interplay of basic geometric forms. There is a light that permeates the reflective black of my oil pool works. There, space is inverted more so than by a mirror. What does it mean to “really see”?
The answer can only be found through the repeated process of actually seeing, touching, feeling, thinking and acting.
Noriyuki Haraguchi
Art is one way I have of evaluating and knowing myself.
I am constantly thinking about just how freely I can open up this space and time I am sharing.
The reason I go for a creative method closer to “drawing out the space” and “feeling,” when dealing with the raw relationships between materials, space and the body, rather than focusing on “making” is because it is my intention to try to go back to basics.
Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo's space incorporates various layers of ethereal characteristics; light and shadow, the openness of the space looking outward, and its grid structure. How should I deal with this as a singular situation? I attempted to create not something that cuts into the space, but rather a neutralizing, triangular structure comprised of the interplay of basic geometric forms. There is a light that permeates the reflective black of my oil pool works. There, space is inverted more so than by a mirror. What does it mean to “really see”?
The answer can only be found through the repeated process of actually seeing, touching, feeling, thinking and acting.
Ataru Sato
When I'm drawing a picture, I think more about myself than about other people. To me, the surface of the paper is like a laboratory, or even a hospital. It is difficult to think about what it is that you live for, but for me, drawing pictures is essential to living. Even with things that have already been elucidated, and are now considered common knowledge, there are a multitude of things that I really do not understand. The truth is I don't understand why the sky is blue or why this sphere called Earth floats around in space. I don't even know who on earth I really am. I feel as if my body is full of unseen things, besides my bones, organs, muscles, etc; the part that hurts when I miss people and the thing that keeps me under control. Life. Supernatural power.
Human beings are such mysterious entities and there are so many things that cannot be fully expressed in words.
I will produce two works for the Espace Vuitton exhibition. The first is my examination of god. This is because when I pray to god during a sad occasion I found the existence of god to be mysterious. The legends say that Japan is home to a countless numbers of gods, but there was no image at all in my head as I desperately prayed, and I was unable to understand who or what kind of entity I was praying to. From that day, I started wanting my own god. I wanted to draw my own god – something other than my parents and other people – upon whom I could rely on spiritually to help me to thrive. It is a god created from an amalgamation of a variety of ideas, much like Frankenstein's monster.
The other work is my own observations of the universe. I don't really understand the universe but whenever I used to look up at the starlit sky as a child I got the vague sense that the universe resembled the human mind. Questions like just how vast the universe is, where it ends and what is on the other side remain unexplained. It is so mysterious and mystical. It is much like how you cannot comprehend the size of your imagination or dreams. Inside our brains are a multitude of galaxies and this fantasy of millions of stars shining away inside our heads excites me. I wondered if I could recreate my own little universe by drawing out, lining up and multiplying various things from within my mind. Over the course of the six-day, on-site public creation of this work I want to see just how far my universe can extend.
I would like to develop god as a drawing and the universe as an illustration.
Tomoko Shioyasu
The particles of light that pour into this space from the outside world, the wind that blows in from the window, the swirling air, the flowing water and clouds, they are like “chi” and cannot be seen but certainly exist in this space. This is what I am trying to express.
It is an image of whirling, colliding and flowing, rising from the bottom to the top before once again blending into the blue of the sky.
The shape of each and every cut is used as a motif of a shape in nature such as water, bubbles, cells, mesh, etc., and I aim to create fluid and organic shapes which call to mind the roots of life.
The latest astronomy research tells us that the innumerable galaxies extending throughout the universe are spread out in a foam-like configuration. If you go down far enough, the expanse of buildings, trees and the air, everything beyond your window, is also made up of an assembly of spheres called molecules atoms and particles.
Distant space, the Earth, the origin of everything, probably began from these bubble-like spheres too.
The view of the town from beyond the window and these countless spheres blend together and proliferate.
Takagi Masakatsu
Light comes from the gigantic globe of the sun, far, far away. When sunlight is refracted and dispersed, a rainbow appears, composed of multiple bands of glowing color. The image of a large source producing many small individual parts is interesting in its way, but what if the world was pictured in the opposite way? If you could imagine that multiple colors and shapes came together to create a rainbow and, ultimately, a huge sun, would you not see the world differently? I believe it is sufficient if the things I do, or the things that I serve, are small but valuable to me. Because they are important to me, I want to make them appear and resound over and over, and this desire always stays with me. I hope to always be a servant to my own spirit.
Go Watanabe
There is a frosted-glass window in front of the kitchen sink and a soft light streams through it. The light quietly flows into the sink as if it possesses a certain weight of its own, sticking to the surface of the cups and teapot and bringing to the surface. This moves along from where the light falls to the other side. However it does not just follow along a single path. Just as airplanes link one city with another via multiple routes gradually splitting into more routes from the point of departure and arriving at the same destination.
