Gallery's Picks for the Month （Tokyo Gendai 2024）

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Teppei Kaneuji

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Teppei Kaneuji was born in Kyoto in 1978. While studying at the Kyoto City University of Arts in 2001, he went on an exchange program to the Royal College of Art in London. He completed his master's degree in sculpture at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2003. Kaneuji uses everyday items such as toys, miscellaneous goods, and stationery as materials, liberating them from their existing uses and meanings. He presents diverse works using collage techniques.

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Teenage Fan Club

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One of his representative works, the "Teenage Fan Club" (TFC) series, is inspired by the movements of concert audiences. He captures the image of audiences shaking their heads to music as if they were a single giant organism. Kaneuji explains that "this series is a figure of phenomena created through the collage of different stories, scales, times, trends, rules, and perspectives. Hair as a motif is important in the history of sculpture and can be seen as an entity between body and material." Since 2005, more than 100 TFCs have been created in collaboration with craftsmen and technicians worldwide, using various materials and techniques. In 2016, a giant TFC, approximately 3 meters tall, created using 3D printing technology in China, attracted attention.

At the end of 2023, Kaneuji participated in the exhibition "TwoClubs" held at the How Art Museum in Shanghai. In this exhibition, a large TFC that had not been shown in Japan was displayed. This work involved combining parts of commercially available palm-sized figurines to create a small TFC as an image prototype. The scanned data was then enlarged to a life-size scale that confronts the human body. A three-dimensional prototype was made using a 3D printer and translated into various materials such as iron, bronze, and resin, creating a dynamic sculptural world.

The process involved elements like "replication," "scaling up/down," and "expression in different materials," reflecting Kaneuji's ongoing creative approach of collaging mass-produced daily items. This new challenge of large-scale sculpture marked a continuation and evolution of his thinking.

At Tokyo Gendai in July 2024, a sculpture over 2 meters tall, Teenage Fan Club (Life-size) #1, which was presented in Shanghai, will be exhibited and sold for the first time in Japan.

When the palm-sized figurine evolves into a 2-meter-tall, approximately 600 kg iron sculpture through Kaneuji's creativity, the initial perception of "audiences shaking their heads to music as a single giant organism" may resonate even more powerfully with viewers. Take this opportunity to confront the work and experience its volume firsthand.

Teenage Fan Club (Life-size) #1
Cast iron
220 × 69 × 104 cm
2023

Exhibition TwoClubs at How Art Museum, Shanghai, China

Teenage Fan club #117 (2023), 18.5 x 14 x 6 cm, plastic figure, hot glue

Teenage Fan Club (2.5/L)2021　UV inkjet print (StareReap 2.5 print) , Aluminum board, 127 x 100 cm

Teenage Fan Club (2.5/L Black) (2021), UV inkjet print (StareReap 2.5 print) on aluminum panel, 127 x 100 cm

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Games, Dance & the Constructions

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The Games, Dance & the Constructions series, which has been presented using various materials and techniques, aims to bring together disparate elements into a cohesive whole by focusing not on the direct meaning of the depicted motifs, but on their composition as forms. This process aims to unify objects of different scales into a single mass.

By giving substance to the "image of manga = something without form," the artist creates works from this concept. As a result, a variety of materials are used, including cushions, acrylic panels, plywood, and prints.

Games, Dance and the Constructions (Soft toys) #5 (2014), silkscreen print on fabric, cotton, framed, 61 x 71 x 4 cm

Left: Games, Dance and the Constructions (Plywood) #3 (2014), silkscreen print on board, 147 x 129 x 6 cm
Right: Games, Dance and the Constructions (Plywood) #2 (2014), silkscreen print on board, 208 x 49.5 x 5 cm

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Snow and Teppei Kaneuji

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Additionally, artworks created by Teppei Kaneuji for the 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Niigata will be showcased in this exhibition.

Since the start of his career, Kaneuji has been creating works centered around snow-covered landscapes in his "White Discharge" series. As he mentioned in past interviews, Kaneuji feels a sense of fiction in the landscapes created by snow. At the 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, he presented an installation with a sci-fi twist featuring a snowplow, which usually stays dormant in a warehouse during summer. Concurrently, in his solo exhibition in Tokyo, he not only used local photographs and materials but also incorporated audio interviews with local residents who spend long winter months indoors writing novels. By adding a sense of fiction to his expression, Kaneuji presented works that evoke the passing seasons and distant places.

This exhibition will feature collage works using photographs of artificial snow mountains and artworks created with stones found locally.

Games, Dance & the Constructions (snowplow) #8 (2018), photograph, silkscreen on acrylic, framed, 62.5 x 82.5 x 4.7 cm


(After conducting research in the Echigo-Tsumari region, known for its heavy snowfall) I found the artificial snow mountains particularly interesting. These are dirty gray snow mountains created by snowplows, which I've also featured in my photographs and videos. Each parking lot of a huge shopping center has an enormous artificial snow mountain. Since there’s no place to store the cleared snow, it’s piled up into mountains within the vast premises. These structures have a strange presence, representing a collision between human activities and immense natural phenomena, or perhaps a form of coexistence between humans and nature. I was struck by these forms born from the relationship between humans and nature.

On the acrylic overlaying the photograph, I’ve printed manga images using silkscreen. This technique was developed during a residency at the printmaking workshop STPI in Singapore. The collage images are derived from the sci-fi manga I read as a child. According to manga researchers, manga from the 70s and 80s, from which I draw inspiration, featured more detailed backgrounds than those of today, aiming to depict a richer, more imaginative world and future through their illustrations.

Each silkscreen on the photographs is unique, with varying layouts and colors. The colors used—red, orange, green, yellow, etc.—are actually chosen to resemble the colors of the snowplow bodies. Additionally, some works are printed on reflective sheets, the same material used for road signs, chosen to evoke the landscapes and industrial imagery of the Echigo-Tsumari region. (From a solo exhibition interview in 2018)

Summer Fiction (River Stone) (2018), stone from the Shinano River, FRP


The stone used in this work is from the Shinano River, which flows through the Echigo-Tsumari region. The Shinano River stones are round and charming, so I wanted to use them as a material. I cast the shape of the stone and used white resin to create a sculpture that rests on the stone. It may look like a snowman, as I aimed to create a sculptural work themed around the state of snow accumulation. The shape of the accumulating snow is influenced by what lies beneath it. In a sense, the underlying form is the prototype created by the accumulated snow. This stone sculpture expresses such a state. By combining stones, the sense of time becomes complex. I wanted to simultaneously show the time scale of the stone, which took many years to reach its current shape, and the time scale of the snow, which forms when it gets cold and disappears when it warms up, repeating this process. (From a solo exhibition interview in 2018)

The art fair Tokyo Gendai will start on July 4th (VIP on July 3rd). Please visit us at Booth No. A5 (Art Front Gallery).

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■Tokyo Gendai

Booth No.
A05 _ Art Front Gallery

Website

VIP Preview
Thursday, July 4, 2024
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Vernissage
Thursday, July 4, 2024
5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

General Admission
Friday, July 5, 2024
11:00 AM – 6:00 PM (Last entry at 5:30 PM)
Saturday, July 6, 2024
11:00 AM – 6:00 PM (Last entry at 5:30 PM)
Sunday, July 7, 2024
11:00 AM – 5:00 PM (Last entry at 4:30 PM)

Venue
Pacifico Yokohama
1-1-1 Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama 220-0012