Gallery's Picks for the Month（art fair Tokyo Gendai ）

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Exhibition Theme："What is reality in the contemporary world？"

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In the booth of Art Front Gallery, we are pleased to present Tadashi Kawamata, a leading Japanese contemporary artist who has been active internationally since the 80's and Iku Harada an artist who creates paintings using computer graphics as a motif. The exhibition will be organized around the works of the two artists.

By showing their works simultaneously, the exhibition will reveal the differences in the way they exist in different periods, and at the same time, the exhibition booth will question the importance of these two pioneers in Japan (and Asia) in their respective eras.

Harada, in particular, is still not recognised internationally for her important position in art, and we would like to use this exhibition as an opportunity for more people involved in the art world to become aware of her work.

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Tadashi Kawamata

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Tadashi Kawamata is one of the Japanese artists who has been at the forefront of the art world since the 1980s, when he participated in Documenta and the Venice Biennale.

As far back as 1984, just after Art Front started the gallery, Kawamata held his first solo exhibition with us." The exhibition, titled "Under Construction", was a timber enclosure of Hillside Terrace, a cutting-edge residential and retail complex that had just opened in Daikanyama at the time. The appearance of the new building surrounded it like a construction site, without regard to the opening hours of the galleries and shops. At the time, it was the most avant-garde form of art that anyone had ever done. Therefore, the work failed to gain the understanding of the people around it and had to be removed just two weeks after it was launched. Ironically, however, this was just after a weekly magazine report drew attention to Kawamata's work as a new possibility for art.

In 2017, Kawamata held an exhibition "Starting over Under construction" at Art Front as revenge for that time. By this time, Kawamata had made a name for himself with projects all over the world, and although the government pointed out the safety of the overhang on some public roads, there was no major disruption and it was positively accepted by the local residents.

Tadashi Kawamata - "Under Construction", 1984, Exhibition view

Tadashi Kawamata - Starting over Under construction, 2017, video documentary

Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit: 《Site Plan #B4》1994 / Cardboard, balsa, aluminum, acrylic / 510 x 720mm

For Kawamata's works, what happens in front of his eyes now is a reality itself. Kawamata was one of the first artists to consider the concept of working progress, in which the act of creation itself is a work of art. Kawamata considers the witnessing of the changes, including the relationships between the objects that are constantly changing in front of his eyes and the people involved in them, as a work of art in itself. For him, every sudden change or setback in the process of production is also a work of art. Therefore, everything that happens in the process (recordings, videos, even memos) and the products (sometimes the remnants of the action) are archived as works of art.

Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit : 《Site Plan 44》1997 / wood, paint / 530 x 740mm

Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit

Scenes of Production (an interview of Tadashi Kawamata is here ）

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Iku Harada

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Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit : 《color trees #001》2023 / canvas, acrylic paints / 1120 x 1940mm

Iku Harada, on the other hand, was born in the 1980s, a time when home PCs were born shortly afterwards. In Harada's childhood, PCs began to enter households in earnest with the introduction of windows 95, and in the 2000s, when Harada was studying at university, Windows 2000, Apple's iMAC and other PCs began to be connected to real life in earnest. It was also around this time that the image of polygon processing became recognized through games such as PlayStation 2.
Around this time, Harada moved from the countryside of Yamagata to Tokyo to study painting, and was surprised by the high level of drawing by the students around her, and realized that she could not continue to do the same thing. Harada asked herself what kind of expression she could create in this situation that would be original to her and that she could continue to do for the rest of her life.
Harada thought that everything in daily life had been drawn throughout history, thus she thought of something that fulfilled three elements: something that no-one had ever drawn before, something that would continue to be drawn in the future, and something that she could develop on her own. As a result, Harada came up with the idea of creating her own personal world using computer graphics, which she called her "inner world". In the early stages of her career, Harada's style was simply to physicalize the virtual space by painting the 3D, yet simple form of his worldview on canvas. In addition to materializing the virtual reality space, she has also developed her work into a work that reflects the spatial motifs of the real world in the virtual space, making the viewer move back and forth between both worlds. Harada is perhaps a pioneer in the uniqueness of artists who use PC imagery as a motif, and is looked up to by the digital artists who are the mainstay of the Japanese art scene these days. (She was also the only painter to participate in a series of exhibitions at NTT Communications' ICC.)

Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit : 《color trees #002》2023 / canvas, acrylic paints / 910 x 725 mm

Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit : 《color trees #003》2023 / canvas, acrylic paints / 910 x 725mm

Tokyo Gendai works on exhibit : 《tree house 2023》2023 / canvas, acrylic paints / 1940 x 1620mm

Reality for Harada, on the other hand, is symbolic and sensible. The evolution of computers is now extending the range of our reality perceptually. In the world, our vision has been augmented by means of AR and VR, and we have begun to enter a world that we cannot touch with our hands and that (in that sense) does not exist. We are entering an age in which we are being asked anew what we have believed to be real.
Here, Harada has skillfully created her own unique worldview using these materials. Harada's inner world, created on a computer over a period of about ten years, takes the form of a conceptually simplified island in the sea. The ground is represented as a flat green surface, reminiscent of a meadow, and the plants and trees standing on it are also simplified in shape. The colors are represented with a clear, computer-like saturation and opaque surfaces. These shapes and colors are not quite like the real world, but they have enough elements for us to understand what they are, and the forms that appear in the rectangle the artist has cut out to depict them are instantly recognizable as landscapes.
By drawing these virtual realities and making them into sculptures, Harada brings the images from her brain into the world as works of art through a series of flows. In recent years, she has added an element of optical illusion to these works, blurring the reality of what is and is not there and questioning the uncertainty of our visible existence.

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In the booth of Art Front Gallery, we will exhibit works by two artists who continue to express themselves by confronting two different "realities" (existence). What is "reality" for you? Please come to our booth and experience the works.

■Tokyo Gendai
July 7th, 2023 (Fri) ~ July 9th, 2023 (Sun)
* July 6th (Thu) for VIP preview
PACIFICO Yokohama
https://tokyogendai.com/