2 April 2020
It is with great regret that in light of the current Covid-19 outbreak we have taken the decision to cancel AKI INOMATA’s exhibition and the Private View. We hope to be able to rearrange it for a later date.
13 February 2020
The Private View was a chance to have a first look at the works of the artist Hochoul Lee, and to watch him put on a special performance. Lee’s recent works have focussed on the meaning of human cognitive functions, and his works are greatly influenced by philosophy. Lee’s inspiration for this series of works comes from the worrying problems related to political issues, the spread of racism and the growth of nationalism, and he believes that the collapse of traditional ethics is related to a lack of imagination and acceptance towards individuality.
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE: Thursday 13 February 2020, 6:30pm
7 November 2019
The Private View is a chance to have a first look at the exhibition Cosmogenesis by the Berlin-based Japanese artist Hiroe Saeki. In this exhibition, she presents a new body of work with graphite and water. The powdered graphite travels through capillaries of water: settling where and when the water evaporates, to be absorbed by the land of paper. The resulting surfaces recall water-carved planetary landscapes.
Saeki’s practice evokes associations with biological or mineral forms, such as geological sediments. Exquisite, miniscule lines take us to the nano level of the cellular structure of organisms. Combined with the serendipitous nature of her new graphite process, they take on a sense of the cosmic.
3 October 2019
The Private View was a chance to have a first look at the exhibition The Post-Anthropocene by the London-based Japanese artist Naoya Inose. The main work in this exhibition, Ave Maria, depicts a Ferris wheel quietly enshrined in a huge cave. This Ferris wheel left by humans is a metaphor of humanity itself and it slowly rotates, climbing up and plunging down from top to bottom. Indeed, the Ferris wheel embodies the time constraints by which humanity is bound. If life and death are the motif of the Ferris wheel, the Ferris wheel in the work Ave Maria has stopped, and time restrictions no longer exist.
6 June 2019
The Private View was a chance to have a first look at Kentaro Yamada’s exhibition ‘Everything Comes in Waves’. Yamada creates poetic installations and structures that allow viewers to experience encounters of human life and material history. In this exhibition, Yamada presents a combination of new and old works, which will include light installations, dyeline prints and a series of sculptural objects as a poetic installation, creating a space to experience encounters of human creativity and materials, and the two coming together as one, as part of a larger Life in cosmic space and time. This exhibition is curated by Francesca von Zedtwitz-Arnim.
16 April 2019
The Private View was an opportunity to have a first look at the works of the acclaimed Japanese artist Haruo Mitsuta. Mitsuta is the only living artist who makes contemporary Jizai Okimono (“articulated animals”) – flexible animal figures made from metal pieces, which can replicate the movements of the original animals. Mitsuta will be showcasing some of his most impressive and startlingly realistic pieces in this exhibition. During the evening Dr Clare Pollard, University of Oxford, gave an introduction to Jizai Okimono.
5 March 2019
The Private View was an opportunity to have a first look at Shuhei Yamada’s exhibition “untitled yet”. In his early works, Yamada focuses on eliminating from images the key objects that enable the viewer to easily understand them. Yamada suggests that viewers should read various meanings into his art. After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, he became interested in exploring the absurdities of the society that surrounds us. In recent years, his work has included not only photography and videos, but also 3D art and installations.
29 January 2019
This event provided the opportunity to have a first look at the work of Susumu Matsuura and hear him discuss the ideas and inspiration behind his work with Dr Lee Campbell. Susumu’s work has “humans” as its main theme, and most of his work expresses human emotions. He is interested in exploring the two-sided nature of human beings, who harbour both positive feelings and greed. Works on display at the Foundation include: symmetrical portraits inspired by the Rorschach test; works inspired by the feelings of depression that the artist himself has experienced; and the series Caress a Cat.
6 November 2018
The kinetic works and paintings presented in Tsuyoshi Anzai’s first solo exhibition in the UK pose questions about the ‘thereness’ of everyday items. Taking inspiration from the Platonic philosophical assumption of a world of ideas which is hidden from human senses, Anzai’s works attempt to disrupt the way we unconsciously and passively perceive “representation”, and challenge visitors to look beyond simplifications and into the intertwined complexities of our modern world.
2 October 2018
The works exhibited here present Akira Yamaguchi’s attempt to resolve the contradiction of being a painter inheriting the legacy of classical Japanese art, but also trained at art school to follow Western (oil-based) painting techniques. Experimenting with different media and questioning the cultural significance of “oil on canvas”, Yamaguchi’s works urge the viewer to reconsider arbitrary boundaries within art history, while inviting us to contemplate the visible and invisible “resonances” of painting.
This exhibition is held in collaboration with Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo.
