Exhibition

Takashi Kuribayashi solo exhibition  「Deadline」
The scenery of 500m from Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant

  • 栗林隆 個展 「Deadline」

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Takashi Kuribayashi solo exhibition 「Deadline」

2015, Oct. 23 (Fri) - Nov. 29 (Sun)

Art Front Gallery is pleased to announce Takashi Kuribayashi's solo exhibition: Deadline.
Date 2015, Oct. 23 (Fri) - Nov. 29 (Sun)
Hours 11:00 - 19:00 (closed on Mondays)
Venue Art Front Gallery (Daikanyama, Tokyo)
Reception 2015, Oct. 23 (Fri) 18:00-20:00
Takashi Kuribayashi studied at Musashino Art University, and on graduation went to live in Germany. In 2002, he was awarded a Meisterschuler at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf. Kuribayashi was struck by the division of Germany into Eastern and Western states, which led him into an on-going consideration in various media of the theme boundaries.

He has participated in international exhibitions, including solo shows at the National Museum of Singapore (2007) and at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (2013), and group shows including the Singapore Biennale (2006). In Japan, his Sumpf Land forms part of the permanent exhibition at the Towada Art Center, while he has also taken part in Sensing Nature at the Mori Art Museum (2010), as well as other group events.

What most attracts viewers of Kuribayashi’s work at the Towada and Mori museums is his large-scale installation of landscapes, combining trees and water. We experience these by trespassing over a boundary and peering into another world. Animals like penguins and seals appear, which is humorous, but also represents life that crosses the boundary of water and land, while at the same time, making the artwork intimate and accessible.

In 2013, Kuribayashi relocated to Indonesia, where the contemporary art scene has recently attracted international attention, as artists trained in Western art search for Asian modes of expression. I am sure the stimuli of such an environment have encouraged Kuribayashi to further develop his theme of boundaries, which has now become multi-layered. One example of his more recent work was seen at Art x Mix in Ichihara, in 2014. A machine was installed in a school principal’s office to freeze the room so as to look as if it had just been in use. The work visualised the invisible, suspending time into a moment that lasts for eternity. Another work, exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum in 2015, recycled trunks and branches of trees felled to make way for building. Kuribayashi divided them into parts, confined them in transparent boxes, and arranged and reorganised them into the shape of a tree. It was a way of visualising what had been lost. Kuribayashi takes viewers along the axis of flowing time and lets them experience differing territories, like the visible and invisible, or what remains and what does not. His investigations of the notion of boundaries are continually broadening.

From October through November various spaces at Hillside Terrace will be used to exhibit the works of Fumihiko Maki, architect, and our gallery will take part. We asked Kuribayashi to make an installation to coincide with this, and were confident he would boldly transform the space into something alien to, or differing in viewpoint from, the Maki exhibition. In relation to the present exhibition Kuribayashi told us how moved he had been when visiting the Tohoku region after the devastating earthquake and tsunami. Based on such experiences, we fully expect Kuribayashi’s new spatial exhibition to beckon us into a world with another dimension, and to lose us there.
Art Front Gallery, Toshio Kondo

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