Friday, July 30, 2010

To-Be // Tokyo + Berlin - Communication Art 2010

Potsdamer Straße 91
10785 Berlin
7th 29 August 2010
www.freies-museum.com

Curated by Tatsumi Orimoto and Thomas von Arx.

Tomohiro Hatori, Tamaki Kawaguchi, Susumu Kinoshita, Tomoko Kofuneko, Masami Kondo, Midori Mitamura, Noritoshi Motoda, Izumi Ooshi, Tatsumi Orimoto, Chieo Senzaki, Tadayuki Shimada, Mio Shirai, Hiroshi Suzuki, Nobuki Yamamoto, Thomas von Arx, Anna Barth, Thomas Dzieran, Kai-Olaf Hesse, Frank Benno Junghanns, Stefan Kreide, Stefan Rueff, Antonio Santin, Ulrike Solbrig, Caro Suerkemper, Peter Unsicker, Juan Varela, Dana Widawski, Regula Zink











The multidisciplinary exhibition To–Be highlights works by 28 artists from Japan and Germany, who research spheres of common ground in the „Being and Becoming“ in both cultures. To–Be is a joint venture based on an open-minded concept by the artists Tatsumi Orimoto and Thomas von Arx. The exhibition is a collective working process between the artists without any instructions from a curator, to create space for developments and conversations reaching beyond the scope of an exhibition. Starting point of this project was a gathering of 19 younger and more experienced artists in the summer of 2009 in Tokyo, who portrayed renowned and emerging positions. The project gains a remarkable dynamic through the conjunction of very differently inspired societies and their individual perceptions of art.












Art as a communication-engine is in this sense connecting and moving independent strategies of exchange and relations. This activating process is an essential aspect of the exhibition: creating an artist-driven „open stage“, that allows and develops inspiring collaborations between cultures, the arts, the artists and the audience. For this project the artists from Japan and Germany will get together in Berlin for two weeks in August. Among them internationally established Japanese artists such as Susumu Kinoshita, Masami Kondo, Tatsumi Orimoto, Chieo Senzaki, Tadayuki Shimada, and Mio Shirai

Monday, July 26, 2010

Florian Bielefeldt















In the hopelessness of this crumbling to ashes golden age of confusion, despite all adversities places of love and happiness. This to avoid it is worthwhile to take the road to Arsenal and there these days, the ongoing Bruce LaBruce retrospective look. If you, gentle reader, following my advice you gather in the arsenal - although you must you tap on the shoulder, as you now, at least once in your life what have you done right - then you not afraid and I keep this moment and let you stand before the photographs in the foyer. By Susanne on Sachsse on one and the same image may be consolation and courage creates in the same breath. Then you still call to mind that I have made this stand, and my blessing will not miss you. So on to the Arsenal! And if you do not believe it but then peep here:















www.florianbielefeldt.de

Friday, July 23, 2010

Tatsumi Orimoto - BBC Cornwall











Japanese artist Tatsumi Orimoto surprised shoppers in Penzance when he made one of his famous Breadman performances in the town. Central to this performance is his use of bread, as Orimoto and other participants become living sculptures. Their heads and faces are covered with bundles of baguettes which are then tied with string. Onlookers stopped and stared as Orimoto led his band of assistants through the town centre.















Starting at The Exchange Gallery, the Breadman will led a tour of tourist sites through the centre of Penzance, stopping for photo opportunities and offering bread to the public. The use of bread is multi-layered, with associations ranging from its function as a staple of the western diet, to connotations of consumerism and poverty, or its meaning in Christian iconography as an emblem of sharing on the one hand and sacrifice on the other.















The focus of his exhibition at the Newlyn Exchange Gallery, Penzance 'Live in Translation' is the work made in partnership with his mother, Art Mama, who he has nursed full-time since she developed Alzheimer's. The exhibition features video, performance and photographic works from his archive such as, Bread Man with Mama, Art Mama: Big Shoes, and Mama in the Box, which span from the 1980s to the present.

The Art Mama series documents the physical and mental decline of his mother, Odei.
The artist lives and works with his mother in Kawasaki City, Japan.

photos by Julia Waugh.

news.bbc.co.uk/local/cornwall/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8821000/8821883.stm

Tatsumi Orimoto - Breadman Performance Liverpool.
































photos by Julia Waugh.


More images at:
www.artinliverpool.com/blog/2010/07/photoblog-tatsumi-orimoto-bread-man-performance/#respond

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Tatsumi Orimoto - An Interview

The exhibition at A Foundation Liverpool celebrates the unique relationship Tatsumi Orimoto has developed with the mediums of translation which allow audiences to become participants in his artworks. An early pioneer of what was to become known as "relational aesthetics', he used the camera as a way of taking art into the public realm and inviting the people to become essential actors in new artworks. In the era of flashmobs and instant imaging his strategy of taking art to the people seems like a prophetic paradigm. Also significant is that they show the importance of pictures in the construction of the memory of events. In order to hold onto our experiences we have to become producers of our own mythology. Through his legendary Bread Man persona Orimoto has traveled the world and featured in numerous biennials from Sydney to Venice. His motto might be: "All you need is Bread", but A Foundation asked him about his life and work:

AF: You have exhibited at the most prestiguous Museums and international biennials and triennials including Venice, Sharjah, São Paulo and Sydney. Some people might let this go to their heads, but you keep the Fluxus ideals of simplicity and playfulness in your work and use cheap materials like bread and discarded dolls, are you not tempted to make the Big Shoes your mother wore on brass or gold?

TO: I always use cheap materials especially in sculptural works - disposed cardboard boxes, newspaper that have been read, the cheapest bread, letter boxes from demolished houses. I have heard a story: the manager of a team collected players who were fired due to their age. He gave them "one more chance", the players were revived by acknowledgment of their "last chance" and they produced great results. I would like to give "the last chance" to these materials that are left as useless and waiting to be burnt. They can be useful "one more time" in my work.

My mother is 91 years old and has become unable to work by herself. Perhaps, the worldview may be tougher on her existence, but she looks glorious in my work! I never considered making the Big Shoes in gold.















AF:
Before it became fashionable to talk about relational aesthetics and audience engagement with artworks, you were a pioneer of this style of making art with your series, Event Communication. It seems that you wanted to offer the public the surprise of artwork outside of museum. Why did you take your art to the public?

TO: Shortly after I came back from New York in 1991, there was a rent based gallery called Gallery K who invited me to do a performance. The genre was hardly known by Japanese audiences at the time. Bread Man was organised with another person, but only 3 visitors came. Then, I thought, there is no point in waiting for the audience to understand. So, I brought 2 Bread Man out of the city on the next day and this was the very beginning of Bread Man series outdoors.

Ever since, I realised that the artworks do not have to be presented inside the white cube of museums or galleries. Instead I can spread out into public space, train stations, streets, cafes, restaurants, hospitals, markets etc. This is also developed my thinking why don't I make artworks through communication and documenting audience reactions who are not only Japanese or wealthy, but reaching our to the poor all over the world.

AF: You studied at the Institute Of Art in California in 1969, which must have been fun, but what did you think of the West Coast Art scene, were there artists who you thought inspirational?

TO:
I failed the entrance exam of Tokyo University Of Arts 7 times and there was nowhere to go. So I went across to the US and luckily I got in to the Institute Of Art. But LA in the 60s had such nice weather, warm, hardly raining and I only wore one t-shirt with a pair of trousers. people drank beer from lunchtime with no sign of motivation in the university. Now we can tell famous people graduated such as Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelly, but I felt somewhere with nice weather without much energy in life cannot produce art any art. There was nobody inspirational at the time and my teacher told me why don't I move to an exciting city like New York, so I left LA to New York after over 1 year.

AF:
After you graduated you were an assistant to Nam June Paik which introduced you to the art scene in New York, but also gave you experience of using new materials such as video, which was hot new technology at the time. Was his experimental and humorous approach contagious for you as a young artist?












TO: When I moved to New York, Nam June Paik was selling the studio, so I bought it off him even though it was a dark and dingy place. My studio was on the third floor, but the second floor was the exhibition space for Fluxus group. Paik had just started his video art, he was learning as the worked in the educational programme department in TV broadcast company, he produced his works there. So I would say I learned performance art from Nam June Paik, as well as taking his old studio space - I would say it taught me a lot by seeing performance by Fluxus artists, Arman, George and Gilbert and Joseph Beuys and thought, "right this is what the performance art is".

www.dna-galerie.de


This interview continues in the A Bulletin-Issue Six.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Tatsumi Orimoto - Live In Translation

Tatsumi Orimoto
A Foundation Liverpool
67 Greenland Street
Liverpool L1 OBY
3 July - 14 August 2010

Showing in partnership with:
The Exchange
Princes Street
Penzance
Cornwall
TR18 2NL

10 July – 18 September 2010
www.newlynartgallery.co.uk













50 Grandmamas Performance 5pm, 3 July 2010 at A Foundation Liverpool

This exhibition, split across two sites, brings into focus the artistic metamorphosis of works made by Japanese artist Tatsumi Orimoto. The exhibitions feature video, performance and photographic works from his archive such as, Pull to Ear, Bread Man and Walking in a Street while Wearing a Carton Box on my Feet and span from 1972 to the present. In Liverpool Orimoto will stage the performance 50 Grandmamas. He will also make Bread Man performances in Liverpool & Penzance.





















Live In Translation celebrates the unique relationship Orimoto has developed to the mediums of translation which allow audiences to become participants in his artworks. An early pioneer of what was to become known as relational aesthetics, he used the camera as a way of taking art into the public realm and invite the public to become essential actors in new artworks. In the era of flashmobs and instant imaging his strategy of taking art to the people seems like a prophetic paradigm. Also significant is that they show the importance of images in the construction of the memory of events. In order to hold onto our experiences we have to become producers of our own mythology. Through his legendary Breadman persona Orimoto has traveled the world and featured in numerous biennials from Sydney to Venice.










However this relationship between performance, memory and image is most moving in his later series of works that feature his mother. The Art Mama series has captured the imagination as it provides an insight into ways in which the artist has taken a universal issue that affects society and turned it into inspiration for an ongoing portrait of our relationship to self-image and aging. With works such as, Mama in the Box and Art Mama: Big Shoes by Art Mama, Orimoto has ensured art is not allowed to drift far from the lived reality of most people.











At A Foundation Liverpool for the first time in the UK we will also show Tatsumi Orimoto's drawings. These are a series of radical animations of his imaginings, and of the narratives of his creative process. These sketches are full of wild energy, exuberant sexuality and ludicrous incongruity. But look closer and you can also see the design and emergence of key new performances such as Punishment.











The Exchange, Penzance 10 July – 18 September 2010, Open Monday to Saturday 10am – 5pm. Please visit The Exchange website for further info.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Jon Fawcett - Hearts and Minds

A Foundation
67 Greenland Street
Liverpool L1 OBY
2 July - 14 August 2010

At 5pm on 3rd July 2010, there will be an action with Blessor, a specially designed unmanned arial vehicle.










The works of artist Jon Fawcett exhibited in the Blade Galleries are a series that test the interfaces between the boundaries of artistic production, dissemination and reception. The inventory of materials used in his works reads like a crossword puzzle made from the remains of the remixed narratives of JG Ballard and Philip K Dick. In a near future moment; an artist wakes in a lucid dream. His ideas have become avatars in a work of art sponsored by the CIA. The viewer is invited into this liminal space to unravel the threads and read blogs posted by others who have had supernatural experiences.

Fawcett’s use of extensive research into tropes of conspiracy and media cults have allowed him to bring into focus the fuzzy logic of new age mysticism that is proliferating in the era of networked consciousness. His sculptures, video and performances exude a menacing technical precision and seduce with a spectrum of alluring colours but these are aesthetic camouflage to cloak ideas that question the nature of the mediated reality or as the artist says, ‘a fabric of contemporary mythologies.’ In this delicate weave in which ephemeral ideas become locked into the history of material technologies from surveillance drones to kevlar weave, the artist uses strategies that simulate those which have become common in the uncanny world in which we live, paralleling activities such as business, politics and war, and operating on a dispersed, global scale.

Visit www.jonfawcett.com for further information

Exhibition supported by: Cut Laser Cut, Metropolitan Works and Nextgen