future sound + future vision at launch pad gallery 7.13 - 7.23.2018

"Future Sound + Future Vision" at Launch Pad Gallery starts in a little less than a week.  The information for the exhibition is now up on the website with introduction, concepts and participating artists.  Just click on the image above.

Additional information about the events and performances should also be up over the next few days and I will add them to this post as they become available.

Here is the information from the Launch Pad Gallery website

“The Tokyo Phonographers Union in conjunction with Launch Pad Gallery present “Future Sound / Future Vision” for World Listening Day 2018. This is a collaborative art exhibition between sound and visual artists. Sound walks, workshops and performances will be included.

More experiment than exhibition this unique collaboration between sound artists and visual artists will be continuously growing and changing with artists working on site at the gallery. Visual artists will create artwork based on inspiration from the sound artists recordings.

We will have special hours from 14:00 - 22:00 each day to accommodate artists and visitors. Guests are free bring beverages (alcohol ok) and food anytime to visit, listen, observe and discuss sound and vision among themselves and/or with the artists.

While most everyone understands what visual art is here are some key points regarding sound art:

* Phonography is the art of field recording or the use of field recordings with the intent of creating a work of art as opposed to the pure documentation of natural sounds. Both processed and unprocessed (straight up) field recordings are used to create phonographic works.

* The Tokyo Phonographers Union is just one of the many phonographers collectives worldwide dedicated to the art of phonography, acoustic ecology and generally concerned with listening or attending to the world around us. 

* World Listening Day is co-organized by the World Listening Project (WLP) and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE). July 18 was chosen because it is the birthday of Canadian writer, educator, philosopher, visual artist, and composer R. Murray Schafer. His effort leading the World Soundscape Project and his seminal book, ‘The Tuning of the World’, inspired global interest in a new field of research and practice known as Acoustic Ecology.

* A soundwalk is a walk with the intent of listening to the sounds of the environment, discovering and enjoying the natural soundscape of a given area or neighborhood. (landscape : soundscape; landmark : soundmark)

We look forward to your visiting the gallery and participating in the many events we will be posting quite soon.

SOUND ARTISTS:

STILL LIFE (TAKASHI TSUDA/HIROKI SASAJIMA)
MARCOS FERNANDES 
CARL STONE
HIROSHI SHIMUZU
YOSHIKO MITSUI
HARUO OKADA 
YOICHI KAMIMURA 
TADAO KAWAMURA

VISUAL ARTISTS:

SATOSHI SAEGUSA
SHISEI HASHIMURA
MASAAKI IWAMA
YUSAKU SAKAI
KAORI MIURA
AKIRA SHIKIYA
ERIKUSA TEI
TOBBY
ARTHUR HUANG
MUNENORI TAMAGAWA
RISA TSUNEGI
FRED VEE
YOSHIE UEKI”

I have been wandering around my studio gathering possible materials to use for creating works in response to the sound files, sound performances, and sound walks.  There is a surprising amount of materials which I have acquired for previous projects dating back more than five years which I am looking forward to using in this exhibition/event.

Beyond the gathering of materials, I have purposefully not given much thought to what I will create to try and let the work happen spontaneously and intuitively.  What I can say is what it will not be which are Daily Drawings or Memory Walks eggshells.  The only other hints that I can give you are the artists that I have been thinking about leading up to Future Sound + Future Vision.

Julie Mehretu
Sarah Sze
Yuko Mohri
Matthew Ritchie
Marco Maggi

I will be at Launch Pad Gallery and the nearby vicinity for five of the eight days as I listen, make work, participate in lectures and sound walks, possibly collaborate and talk with visitors and other artists.  Here is my schedule for "Future Sound + Future Vision"

Friday July 13th - 2:00 - 8:00 pm
Saturday, July 14th - 2:00 - 8:00 pm
Monday, July 16th - 2:00 - 6:00 pm
Friday, July 20th - 2:00 - 8:00 pm
Sunday, July 22nd - 2:00 - 6:00 pm

It is not a fixed schedule, so I maybe there a little earlier and a little later than those hours depending on the day.  But If you come by Launch Pad during those times, you will have a good chance of seeing me there.  

Finally, here is the access information for those of you making your way to Launch Pad Gallery for the first time.

LAUNCH PAD GALLERY (click to the left for Google Map link)
5-186-8 ISHIKAWACHO NAKA-KU
KANAGAWA-KEN, 231-0868
JAPAN
045-641-0511

VIA JR KEIHIN TOHOKU NEGISHI LINE
Arrive at Ishikawacho Station and head towards South Exit
Use the right side exit opposite the canal
Walk straight for five minutes

VIA YOKOHAMA SUBWAY BLUE LINE
Arrive at Isezaki-Chojamachi Station and head towards Exit 3
Turn left and walk straight for 10 minutes

VIA MINATO MIRAI LINE
Arrive at Motomachi/Chukagai Station and head towards Exit 5
Turn left and walk straight for 20 minutes

where has my mind been, part iii

As the year has progressed, I have received invitations to participate in several group exhibitions.  The first one is currently ongoing through the end of June at the World of Glass in St. Helens, England.  The Size Matters group exhibition consists of works that are 20 cm x 20 cm or smaller.  I had originally planned to submit some Daily Drawings, but they fell just outside the size parameters. Mulling through alternatives, I decided to send three of my Daily Drawings Cells that were exhibited at the 2017 Nakanojo Biennale. 

Photo Credit:  Paul Cousins

Displaying the Daily Drawings Cells on the wall opens up another format in which I can create installations with this work.  In fact, this idea is much closer to the original exhibition plan that I had submitted for the Daily Drawings Network with the Daily Drawings Cells and Memory Walks covering all surfaces of the gallery space (walls, floor, and ceiling). 

From July 13 – 23, 2018, Launch Pad Gallery will be holding the exhibition/event “Future Sound / Future Vision” in conjunction with World Listening Day on July 18th.  This project will consist of sound artists and visual artists where the visual artists will be creating work in response to works created by the sound artists.  With my work with elementary school students and Artfull Actionin Musashikoganei, I have had a revitalized interest in sound and visual arts which originated way back with my love of Wassily Kandinsky’s work.  For this project, I am planning to create work at the gallery over the course of one day.  While I could anchor this work along with the lines of the Daily Drawings Project or the Memory Walks Project, I am going to take an open ended approach to what I will do.  Beyond two-dimensional works, I am considering elements of sculpture, installation, and performance for this project.  This will be a very experimental work that will probably fall more in the place of being a work that opens up other possibilities for my studio practice.  I am grateful to Launch Pad Gallery for the opportunity to play with listening and making.

Last year, I had the opportunity to exhibit my Memory Walks Project with Jill d’Art Gallery at Art Nagoya 2017 which was then followed up with the three person exhibition “New Face” at Jill d’Art Gallery where I exhibited another iteration of my Memory Walks Project and some drawings mounted on panel.  2018 is the 10th anniversary for Jill d’Art Gallery in Nagoya and the gallery is organizing an group exhibition which will include 28 artists whom have exhibited with the gallery over the ten years.  I am excited to be invited to be part of this show.  With so many artists participating, it will be primarily and exhibition of small works.  For this exhibition, I have been thinking about the possibilities for these small works.  I have many stretched paper A5 panels which I have had the intention of working on over the last year, but almost all of them hang blank on my studio wall.  I am hoping to combine elements from my Daily Drawings and Memory Remnants Projects with these new works.  

And finally, it has been more than five years since I last exhibited my work in the Bay Area and I received news earlier this month that a curatorial proposal in which my work was included in was accepted for exhibition in April 2019!  Details are still forthcoming, but I am happy and excited to have the opportunity to share my work in the Bay Area after so many years. 

And with that I can conclude part iii which seems to be a long overdue news and update portion of my posts.  For "parts iv" and beyond, I hope to return to sharing more about what I am seeing and thinking in the studio.  Thank you for reading and stay tuned.

where has my mind been, part ii

At the end of 2017, I headed down south from Tokyo to the Chigasaki Museum of Art to see an exhibition by Michiko Fujita whom I had the pleasure of exhibiting with for the "Endless Dialogue" three-person show at Hasu no Hana.  During my visit, I was introduced to the curator of the Chigasaki Museum of Art who was interested in learning more about my studio practice after hearing about my work from Michiko Fujita.  The Chigasaki Museum of Art is working with other Kanagawa prefecture museums along with the Kanagawa International Foundation for the MULPA project.

From the Kanagawa International Foundation website:

The “MULPA: Museum UnLearning Program for ALL” is a first-of-its-kind program whose aim is to “make museums accessible” to “all members in the community” that was proposed by Kanagawa International Foundation, developed and launched last year by the directors, curators of four public museums and art festival coordinators in Kanagawa Prefecture. The project explores what kinds of educational programs and events of art museums can be put on toward the society to respect each other’s differences. Ahead of 2020, the year of the Tokyo Olympics, museums participating in MULPA will host a variety of art workshops that are inclusive to all members of society in order to make the museums community hubs in a true sense. The upcoming first MULPA event features a world café-type workshop whose goal is to promote sincere and lively discussion among museum curators as well as museum supporters including volunteers, civil organization members, university students and individuals who have difficulty visiting museums, including those facing physical and language-related barriers, about how museums can be made enjoyable for all.

We made plans to meet in early 2018 to discuss my studio practice and work in more detail to see if I might be a good fit for this project.  After meeting and presenting my work to the core members of the Chigasaki Museum of Art team, I was invited to be part of this project which is tentatively planned for the summer of 2019.  At the time, the shape of this project was still largely undecided and one of the ways to help give the project shape was to conduct a series of field research meetings under the theme of "The Road to the Art Museum".  To date, there have been three field research meetings to date.  The first one was an introduction to the project as well as discussions about accessibility for persons with disabilities.  The second one was a discussion about inclusive design while the third one was about the use of sound as a means of making the museum more accessible.  For each field research meeting, the structure is a brief presentation followed by field research which involves walking around the museum area and Chigasaki vicinity to put the presentations into context.  Due to the logistics of moving around efficiently for the field research, the meetings have been limited to the participating core members and invited presenters.  The Chigasaki Museum of Art has done a wonderful job of documenting each of the field research meetings so I have had a chance to see what each of the meetings has involved.  While in Japanese, you can still get a sense of the shape of the meetings through the images.

My field research meeting is scheduled for the end of July.  Ahead of my meeting, two of the core members, Shozo Kuze and Mariko Sakamoto, who compose the art and design unit, MATHRAX, currently have an exhibition, "Voices of Stones / いしのこえ" at the Chigasaki Museum of Art through July 1st. 

Last Sunday, I went to the museum to hear their artist talk and see their work which won a Haptic Design Award in 2017.  Before the artist talk, I decided to do a little bit of field research on my own to get started on preparations for my field research meeting.  Being my third time to Chigasaki, I have become familiar with the winding route from the station to the museum.  My first time was spent navigating curves and forks in the road eventually finding my way there. 

At the entrance to the park where the museum is located there is a map of the area and it turns out the beach is only 15 minutes from the museum.  I decided to make field recordings of my walk from the museum to the beach and back, taking a different route on the way back.  Along the way, I started to think about where my studio practice and interests might intersect with this project.

The artist talk by MATHRAX was very interesting and informative as they explained their inspiration, concept, and production for the "Voices of Stones" project.  I was so impressed with their work and presentation that I became a bit unsure about my inclusion and potential contribution to the MULPA project.  Seeds of doubt and low level panic began to set in. 

After the artist talk, I wandered around the installation taking in their work and thinking more about my role in this project.  I also had a chance to speak with the artists along with the curator who was reassuring when she mentioned to me to remain open and not have any fixed ideas about my project and the upcoming field research meeting.  I ended up at the museum for several hours speaking with other field research participants, artists and visitors.  As I walked out of the museum to head back home, I came away with a sense of excitement at the possibilities of new ideas and collaboration. 

From now until the end of July, part of my time will be spent thinking about "The Road to the Art Museum" and how it relates to my studio practice, especially to the Memory Walks Project and my work with Artfull Action and elementary students last fall.

As always, my intended two part post has seemingly ballooned to at least four parts.  More to come.

where has my mind been, part i

As I look through my blog posts, I realize that it has been more than three months since my last substantive post that was not a Daily Drawing.  It is not because I do not think almost daily to sit down and write about where I am at in my studio practice, but perhaps it is because of the enormity of trying to put down where my mind is at and has been over the last three months.

There has a been a steady stream of studio administrative tasks which have occupied my time over the last several months.  One of which was to consolidate my website domain www.arthurjhuang.com with my current one www.arthurjhuang.work here on Squarespace.  After months and months of hemming and hawing, I finally transferred the .com domain from Yahoo (after more than 15 years) to Squarespace and it will automatically be re-directed to the current .work website.  The process was made surprisingly manageable by the excellent instructions provided by Squarespace's Help Center.  

With that daunting task out of the way, it is time to tackle other no less daunting administrative tasks.  However, those are more about organization and preparation on my end than some still seeming unknowable black box.

Since the end of last year, I have been making a steady stream of applications for artist in residence.  As with any application process, the first few submissions elicited excitement and hope, but through the first half of 2018 the letters of "not at this time" began to accumulate.  The inevitable soul searching and self doubt began to take place.  This is all part of the process, but somehow prior knowledge of this does not seem to dampen the intensity of the soul searching.  With each "not at this time" letter, another artist in residence deadline pops up on my radar and I pick myself up again and make another application.  At the moment, I have two applications out for consideration - Headlands Center for the Arts in the Bay Area and Sirius Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland.  I am looking at July deadlines for Lightworks and Willapa Bay.  Once those finish, the yearly cycle of artist in residence applications will repeat with Yaddo and Djerassi being on my wish list. 

As I have been revising and reworking my applications, I have noticed how my application package i.e. statement and proposal have become more clear and polished which gives me some hope for future applications. 

Along with artist in residence applications, I have been making applications for a number of exhibition opportunities in Japan and abroad.  These efforts have met with similar results as my artist in residence applications and have perhaps amplified the depths of my soul searching.

The Daily Drawings Project has continued at a steady pace of about one drawing per day.  The actual organization and analysis of the over one thousand drawing has taken a backseat.  I have taken the Daily Drawings Cells from my Daily Drawings Network installation and created small cluster maps of possible origins.  Beyond that, I have been spending most of my time thinking about the growing enormity of the data analysis at hand and plying artist in residence selection committees for a chance to make major headway and discover to this end.

The Memory Remnants Project which can be seen on my Instagram account started in February as an effort to utilize the many blank notebooks that I have accumulated over the years.  For each day, I have been creating collages with paper that would otherwise be directly thrown away such as envelopes, expired exhibition announcements, packaging, to name just a few types.  The project has gathered a life of its own over the last four months and embedded itself into my daily studio practice along with the Daily Drawings Project. 

The Memory Walks Project has been on a sort of hiatus since last summer, but the data compilation continues with daily lists of my departure points which will be used for future projects that are taking shape.

Outside of these studio practice activities, I have spent the better part of my time reading and listening to a wide range of texts.  Speculative fiction has been a big part of my reading list while texts about archives, forgetting, consciousness, the human species, and artificial intelligence are amongst some of the other topics of interest.

While this void is uncomfortable and uncertain, I have been able to give myself a bit more license to let my mind wander as it likes through these topics as the months have gone along.

Experience has always shown that these voids inevitably come to an end and true to form, the latter half of 2018 and start of 2019 is starting to take shape.

Small clusters of information seem to be best, so I end this post and will share what the next 12 months or so looks like in a separate post.

what the last month has brought to the table (part two)

All right, I am back and realise that this could be an epic serialisation, but let's get back to the recap and reflection.

There were a pair of exhibitions that I wanted to see, but they were closing and I did not have time over the weekends to see the exhibitions.  So I made a point of hustling over to Ueno to see an exhibition by Kumiko Ogi at Storefront after work.  Her work utilises newspaper and unused foreign currency that we all have left from our overseas vacation.

From there, I crossed through Ueno Park onto the other side of Ueno Station and through some small alleyways as the sunset to see Mayumi Okabayashi's exhibition at Minna no Gallery.  She is based in Germany but occasionally exhibits her work in Japan and I had happen to come across her exhibition postcard which piqued my interest and this show also did not disappoint.

You can see more of both their works by clicking on their names which are linked to their websites.

Due to the snowstorm back in January, the Canvas Artist Talks Volume 3 only had half the presenters, including myself, and some very dedicated friends and art lovers.  As a result, we all decided to give it another shot in February and there were four speakers and a very enthusiastic crowd for the Canvas Artist Talk Winter Session.  In addition to myself, Karin Pisarikova and two artists in residents at 3331, Lan Chunghsuan and Jenny Forster made presentations about our work.  It was a great opportunity to learn about what the AIR 3331 artists were up to and other AIR 3331 artists also came to hear the presentations.  

Having reworked my talk to address some of the questions that were raised in January, I was asked some more "hard" questions about my work which again have provided food for thought about my practice.  One of the things that I remember was being asked about how this process of discovery would affect my "unconscious" drawing practice down the line.  This question about how not to influence my process based on the knowledge that I acquire through scientific methodology has followed me since graduate school.  There is really no way to maintain unknowing when you make discoveries.  I think those discoveries can drive the direction of the work into new places, but those new places offer new opportunities for discovery.  In some ways it does mimic scientific discovery since science is based on proving a hypothesis which then serves as the basis for future research.  However, new hypotheses based on previous findings may actually overturn previous work based on new data and especially new technologies and ideas.  I am not actually discovering anything definite and fixed about myself in the process, but rather trying to figure out where I am at a particular moment.  The other thing that came up after my presentation was my complex about control - needing it and trying to let go of it.  This push and pull certainly permeates my studio practice and my personal life.

Later in February, I headed over to Bakurocho to see an exhibition by Miho Tanaka at Jinen Gallery.  I had picked up the exhibition postcard during my last visit to Jinen Gallery and was intrigued by the image on the postcard.  

I asked about the kind of work and it turned out to be drawing when I thought it might be installation.  I walked into the gallery to discover these amazing drawings of ropes, strings, and plants made on wash.  I immediately fell in love with her drawings and proceed to spend a good amount of time leisurely poring over each of the drawings.  The detail and quality of her lines was just so sumptuous.  I ended up walking back and forth between two pieces and in the end, I bought one of her drawings.  The tangle of ropes and strings was a motif that I am particularly drawn to.  I think that also speaks a bit to my love for Chiharu Shiota's work.  There is a feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia that comes with imagining oneself in the midst of all the tangles.  Her drawings also inspire me to push the quality of my own drawings.  You can find some images of her work at her Instagram account here.

From there I headed to Yamaguchi for a long weekend to visit Akiyoshidai International Artist Village to attend the opening for their 2017 - 2018 trans-artists AIR program.  I have made this trip to Yamaguchi at the February whenever my schedule allows.  I always enjoy meeting the artists in resident and seeing how they process their experience of being at AIAV and the surrounding areas in relationship to my own experiences there.  

Upon arriving at Yamaguchi Ube airport, I ended up doing some gallery and museum hopping with an AIAV and Nakanojo Biennale alumni staff member.  We headed to the Nakahara Chuya Memorial Museum in central Yamaguchi to see the group exhibition Yamaguchi Valley Section - Reflections 2018 exhibition.  Here is the flyer of the participating artists.

Yoshiyuki Shirakawa's kinetic installation on the grounds of the museum which was triggered by ambient sounds surrounding the museum was one of my favourites.  Other favourites include Kyoto Sawanobori's Poems of Days Past which was a small installation of lights and text tucked in a corner of the museum.  Keijiro Suzuki's Ah, what have you been...which was a series of photo books that were tucked among books in the museum's bookshelves was a hard to find but rewarding discovery because the photo book contained images of of his (?) feet from various locations while in Europe.  Fan Shuru's Line, Record: Ink Landscape Diary was interesting because of the time based process which I also practice.  Shuru's practice feels more meditative than my practice, but I also do find myself occasionally in the meditative state with my Daily Drawings.  Hideo Shimada's layered glass abstract works were a visual treat that made me think back to my work with my Memory Walks Drawing Cells and the possibilities available with that project.

You can see the actual works from this exhibition at the Yamaguchi Valley Section Facebook Page here.

Well this could be a ten part serialisation.  Time for bed.  More tomorrow, I hope.  Still hoping to write more about curation and rejection as I make my way through exhibitions which have inspired me.

what the last month has brought to the table (part one)

Ever since returning from Yamaguchi at the end of February, I have set my sights on gathering my thoughts about what I have seen and what has inspired me to dive deeper.  Unfortunately, time does not slow down and here we are about to hit the middle of March.  Between the last time that I wrote anything substantial, which was February 10th, and now, there are been countless things that I have seen and surprisingly a significant number of things that continue to stick with me over the last month or so.  

There is no way this is all going to get finished in one sitting as I see the clock about to strike midnight.  So rather than go for a clean, complete writing for each entry, I am just going to see where each post goes before my eyelids droop over my eyeballs send me into dream land.  I will pick up where I left off on the next post and I really hope I can get caught up by the end of this week.

Way back in February after my visits to Roppongi and Ebisu, I ended up making one more gallery visit that weekend.  On the recommendation of an artist I met in Nakanojo, I went over to Gallery Holster to see an exhibition of drawings by Irie Nanako.  Unbeknownst to me, I ended up at the gallery just after an artist talk which I found out afterwards.  This explained the crowd of people in the space at 3 pm on a Sunday afternoon.  As I wandered around the gallery space, I understood why I was told about her exhibition.  You can see in some of the photos below.  

I ended up spending a fair bit of time looking at the drawings and thinking about how these were made.  I managed to snag a minute of her time and asked her about her process and she said that each of these drawings are made with a story, thought, or feeling in mind.  We have talked about sitting down some point this spring to talk about our works in more detail.  I can see an interesting contrast in terms of how the two of us approach drawing.  You can see more of her work by clicking here.

On the next day, I headed over to Shiinamachi nearby check out the opening for "After 10 Years" at Erina Matsui's new Atelier.  The exhibition consist five artists whom all graduated around the same time and maintained ties.  Matsui gathered the five artists together to hold an exhibition of the four artists as well as an open studio for her atelier.  Here is an image of her open studio.

One of the artists in the exhibition was Haruna Sato whom also exhibited at the 2017 Nakanojo Biennale.  I have followed her work for many years now.  I remember having moved to Tokyo for a just a couple years and then seeing her gorgeous paintings of babies, especially their skin and have followed her work since then.  She has also been exploring landscape motifs with her paintings which were at the atelier along with one of her skin paintings.

I also liked the paintings of stones and gems by Yuki Nakamura that were also in the exhibition.

Okay, that is it for part one.  I am off to bed.  Back tomorrow!

Before I forget, I do want to cover thoughts about curating and studio space, both of which have been on my mind the last month or so.  So if I forget to do so in part two, remind me!

visual scrapbook

As I spend time scrolling through my Instagram feed, I have occasion to "save" an image because it piqued my visual or literary curiosity in relation to my studio practice.  Rather than having them sit in the "Saved" section of my profile page.  I thought I would screen capture them and put them here as a post.  The act of sorting through them and then re-posting them gives me a chance to revisit the images and hopefully pursue the ideas or images they sparked a bit more deeply.

what i saw in ebisu, roppongi, and ginza

As usual, I made a tentative plan earlier in the week for my gallery and museum hopping, but as always things change.  After seeing a number of posts on Thursday night about the 10th Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, I decided that would be my starting point since the theme was "Mapping the Invisible" where there could be some potential discoveries.  The main venue is the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Ebisu and I began to work my way through the works which were mostly video installations.  Given that I had arrived at the museum just shortly after opening, I had plenty of time and decided to try and give each work my fullest attention.  After almost two hours of wandering through the three floors of works, here are a handful that stick in my mind.

Gabriel Herrera Torres' "How to Reach God Thru Proper Exercise" single channel video offered a strange yet absorbing experience centered around a Polish recreation centre, dream transference, and color blindness.

From the Yebisu Int'l Festival for Art & Alternative Visions website

The Cuttingly Fairy Photographs and Related Materials was by far the most fascinating work in the exhibition.  I had not known about these photographs and the story behind them.  From the Museum of Hoaxes website.

"In 1920 a series of photos of fairies captured the attention of the world. The photos had been taken by two young girls, the cousins Frances Griffith and Elsie Wright, while playing in the garden of Elsie's Cottingley village home. Photographic experts examined the pictures and declared them genuine. Spiritualists promoted them as proof of the existence of supernatural creatures, and despite criticism by skeptics, the pictures became among the most widely recognized photos in the world. It was only decades later, in the late 1970s, that the photos were definitively debunked."

The exhibition consisted of the five photographs along with various ephemera relating to those photographs, other fairy photographs, and research that debunked the authenticity of those photographs.  As it turns out, the Cottingley fairies in the photographs were cut outs from an illustration book.  Of the five photographs on exhibit, four of the photographs visibly included these cut outs.  But the fifth one "Fairies and Their Sun-bath" was much more intriguing and ambiguous and which Frances insisted as genuine.

From the 5-Minute History website

This analogue photographic deception that took place almost 100 years ago resonates with me because of the fervour that it caused during that time and how the images were widely accepted as genuine and that it took decades to discover the true nature of the images.  Our current digital technologies offer the same dilemma in terms of trying determine what is genuine and what is altered.  A century from now, or sooner, will we see the images from this period more clearly for what is genuine and what is altered?

Mako Idemitsu's "At Yukigaya 2" single channel video was interesting for me in terms of materiality.  The work utilised high contrast film to provide stark contrast and abstraction to images from nature.

From the Yebisu Int'l Festival for Art & Alternative Visions website

Natsumi Aoyagi's "Incubation Diary" installation gave me the opportunity to contemplate the  presentation of research-based work and documentation.

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I have mixed feelings about the installation.  I do like the specimens or materials enclosed in an acrylic case, but I also find it inaccessible for the viewing audience.  The non-ordered display of the acrylic boxes felt like a good way to move the viewer around the space.  On the other hand, having the installation displayed with the back side of a constructed wall in all its unfinished glory was confusing to me.  Seeing this installation made me think that I have to look more at the display strategies that Mark Dion and Fred Wilson have employed in their work.

The final work from the 10th Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions that I wanted to mention was a collaborative research project by Natacha Nisic and Ken Daimaru into "itako" who are blind women who became spiritual mediums through apprenticeship.  This video installation centres on the last itako, Take-san and her stories.  More of a documentary to me, I found it deeply fascinating to discover spiritual mediums in a Japanese context.  The works sits well next to my current fascination with the spirits and the after life.

From the 10th Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, I headed over to the National Art Centre Tokyo to see the 16th New Artist Unit exhibition and the DOMANI exhibition.  I headed into the 16th New Artist Unit (also known as NAU21) exhibition first and I was struck by the size of the exhibition space and the size of the works in this exhibition.  Over fifty artists displayed their works in this exhibition with most artists having a pair of works.  As with these larger exhibitions, there is a bit of something for everyone.  I found a handful of works to be interesting and lingered over those for a bit although most did not relate to my studio practice.  My favourite piece in that regards would be Satoko Shimokawara's paper dress which was pocked with seemingly thousands of holes obsessively made by burning through the material.

From the NAU21 exhibition, I headed over to the DOMANI exhibition which I have not seen for a couple of years.  Keith Mori's architectural drawings made by stretching thread and gluing them directly to paper, canvas, or the wall was the highlight of the exhibition for me.  I had a chance to take photographs, but it does not do the work justice.  The smaller works were what drew me in and here is one of the pieces that was in the exhibition.

From Keita Mori's website

Michiko Nakatani's negative relief plaster sculptures in the shape of "paintings" filled with layered images of crows or ravens that are brought to life by filling in the negative space with different transparencies of dyed resin were an absolute feast for the eyes.  Her work had me thinking about how one can and should continue to look for new ways to apply tried and true mediums.  

From Galerie Rothamel's website

I spent a good amount of time taking in the work by both these artists because I realised that photographing them would not give me a sense of what these works transmitted.  If you are in Tokyo, I recommend stopping by to see the exhibition if only for these two artists.

From the National Art Centre Tokyo, I headed to another DOMANI-themed exhibition at the Hibiya Library & Museum entitles "Artists Meets Books" with another group of Japanese artists who have participated in the Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists.  It is always good to see the gorgeous works of Aiko Miyanaga.

Masahiro Hasunuma's multiple Kinora works were a pleasant discovery in terms of forms for an artist books.  The Kinora is an predecessor to the motion picture projector in which hundreds of pages are animated by turning them against small steel plate.  The best thing about it was discovering a Kinora about Ogijima which was the island in the Setouchi Inland Sea where I participated in the 2013 Setouchi Triennale.  In the image below, you can see a picture of the Meon ferry that takes you to and from the island and Takamatsu port.

I finished my long day of gallery and museum hopping in Ginza.  Tomo Hirai's "Pottery Fragments and Reminiscences" at the LIXIL Gallery had me thinking back to my Memory Walks eggshell drawings and thinking about future possibilities.

From a few other stops which included Gallery Natsuka and the Tokyo Institute of Photography 72Gallery, I finished up the day at the Okuno Buildings.  As the elevator was being used for a delivery, I ambled my way up the stairs and took a leisurely peek around each floor.  On the fourth floor, this postcard announcement lured me into Gallery 403.

In the gallery, I found a series of photographs by Jun Sato whom creates patterned and repeating models based on geometric forms and then photographs them to create works like you see in the above left.  As it turns out, the glass object on the right is by Yumiko Kimura who also uses numerical sequences like the Fibonacci sequence and other geometric and mathematic patterns to create her works.  They are a couple who are based in France and have been working for years in this field of geometric art.  I had a chance to speak with both of them and learn more about MADI community in Europe.  What is Madi art?  From Wikipedia,

"Madí (or MADI) is an international abstract (or concrete) art movement initiated in Buenos Aires in 1946 by the Hungarian-Argentinian artist and poet Gyula Kosice, and the Uruguayans Carmelo Arden Quin and Rhod Rothfuss.

The movement focuses on creating concrete art (i.e., non-representational geometric abstraction) and encompasses all branches of art (the plastic and pictorial arts, music, literature, theater, architecture, dance, etc.). The artists in the Madí movement consider the concrete, physical reality of the art medium and play with the traditional conventions of Western art (for instance, by creating works on irregularly-shaped canvases). Artwork of Madí movement appeared in eight issues of its magazine, Arte Madí Universal, published between 1947 and 1954."

There is currently an exhibition of Madi artists in Kanazawa and Yumiko Kimura had a copy of the catalog and the work in the exhibition was gorgeous.  I will not make it up to Kanazawa in time to see the exhibition, but I am hoping that Yumiko Kimura can find me a copy of the digital version and I will share some works at the time.  

My final stop was Gallery Camellia to see the abstract paintings by Satoshi Yoshida who was in the gallery and we had a good conversation about making daily drawings, John Zurier, Laura Owens, Ingrid Calame, and Thomas Nozkowski.  I am feeling a bit of an itch to getting back to painting or at least more brush-based work which might be evident in my current batch of Daily Drawings.  

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A long but fruitful day of gallery and museum hopping in which I managed to cover quite a range of works and ideas.  My next planned day of gallery hopping is next Thursday although I do not expect it to be as intensive as this past Friday.  I am hoping to see one or two exhibitions here and there before next Thursday.

where is all of this going

A few weeks ago, on a very snowy Monday night, I gave a short presentation at the 3rd iteration of the Canvas Artist Talks in Shimokitozawa.  Despite the mounting pile of snow, I made my way to the venue and gave a presentation to a small crowd of devoted artists and art appreciators.

In the past, I had focused my presentations on my Memory Walks Project, but decided that I would talk primarily about my Daily Drawings Project, particularly the Daily Drawings Network installation, which I created for the Nakanojo Biennale 2017.  My aim in the presentation was to give the audience a sense of my methodical and experimental nature in the studio.

At the end of the presentation, I was asked several thought-provoking questions about my work and the aims of the work.  Since then, I have been thinking on and off about these questions and it has led to a bit of an artistic existential crisis.  However, like all previous artistic existential crises, I believe that it will help pave the way for the next steps in my studio practice.

The Daily Drawings Network represents the first phase of what I have considered to be a three part project.  In the Daily Drawings Network, I began to organize my Daily Drawings based on colors, motifs, and location among other variables.  During my residency, I also included months and days as additional variables to add a third dimension to the installation.  I also began to keep track of any audio/video that I listened/watched while making these drawings, although this information did not make it into the installation.

I view all of these organizational strategies as a way to organize my Daily Drawings into packets of data.  Truth be told, the organizational strategies that I have taken up to this point have not gone far enough.  I have 391 drawings from 2017 and I have moved forward with any of the above organizational strategies for the drawings beyond those installed for the Daily Drawings Network which means I still have over 150 drawings to add to the database.

Once all the data has been archived, my plan is to look for commonalities, causalities, correlations, and other unifying variables.  These 3 C's all look at different aspects of unification.  In discovering these 3 C's, I envision generating hypotheses about how I make these drawings.

During the presentation, I was asked about my methods for data analysis.  Since I began this kind of work back in graduate school, I have always eschewed the use of any computational software even though the technology has evolved exponentially in the last 15 years.  Rather, my data analysis remains in the analogue / Excel spreadsheet period.  I perform simple sorts, quantify the data, and then organize it in ways which I think will lead to discovery.  This hands on approach is tied to my desire to experiencing the moment of discovery as I pore over the data.  Admittedly, it is extremely inefficient and tedious and has been a source of procrastination.  I also realize that I probably need to improve my toolbox of statistical analysis so I can make more complex analysis that could lead to fruitful discoveries.  Recently, I have stumbled upon a free online course for learning Python which is a general programming language that has been used for data science.  If I look at my actual progress in data analysis in all my projects over the last fifteen years, it is possible that I may take the leap and see what powers I can harness without sacrificing the light bulb clicking on at the moment of insight.

Once the data analysis is complete, what is next?  I have imagined that I would take all the hypotheses and insights and create an installation which depicts them in a visual manner.  There is no basis for the installation since there are no insights to structure them on, but I imagine using the Drawing Cell structures in combination with the actual Daily Drawings.  I also imagine the idea of using the different components to create larger layered/collaged works that would explicate those hypotheses and insights.  Another question which I was asked at the presentation has become a head scratching one for me - what do you hope to learn from this process?

My answer at that time was I am not sure.  It lead to the follow up question of where does it go after that i.e. the third part of my envisioned tripartite project.  At this point, I am still not sure, but I have some strands of ideas that I could perhaps grab onto.

I started to think about the Daily Drawings Project in a conceptual framework when I exhibited my Daily Drawings and Memory Walks drawings for the first time at hasu no hana in December 2016.  During the course of the exhibition, I had many discussions with visitors and gallery director Kazue Fukuma about the relationship of the two types of drawings which began to be framed as conscious memory (Memory Walks) and unconscious memory (Daily Drawings).  Over the course of the exhibition as well as afterwards, I began to refine my conception of what kinds of memories the Daily Drawings access.  I do not think either project is exclusively one or the other, but rather somewhere along the spectrum of unconscious and conscious memory. 

The way the Daily Drawings are created speak more to the unconscious side of memory, although not completely.  They are not automatic drawings in the absolute sense like Surrealist Andre Masson who "began automatic drawings with no preconceived subject or composition in mind. Like a medium channeling a spirit, he let his pen travel rapidly across the paper without conscious control."  I do begin each drawing with no preconceived composition in mind, but I am consciously controlling the kind of mark I make, whether they be small circular forms or thin lines.  Repetition is also an important part of my drawing process which allows me a sense of automaticity in my drawings.  At some point, which is usually a physical exhaustion or change in environment (sudden stops, shaking, or someone sitting next to me), the spell is momentarily broken and then I make some conscious decision about whether to continue as I had been or make a change in my drawing process.

The forms that I use to create the Daily Drawings are purposefully abstract so that I am not consciously making reference to concrete things.  In this way, I think it leads to drawings that result in imagery that is of worlds unseen whether they be macroscopic or microscopic.  Given my background, the microscopic references my over two decades of work in molecular biology although none of the forms are created in direct reference to cells, neurons, or microorganisms.

In this way, I think I am working on creating a cosmology for my drawings.  Each of these Daily Drawings usually represents one species in the cosmology, but sometimes they are multiple species interacting on a single sheet of paper.  In that sense, these Daily Drawings can be seen as a developing taxonomy of my cosmology - at this point a completely unorganized taxonomy.  However, the Daily Drawings which number almost 900 at this point can be seen as documentation of the unseen and records of discovery.

As I write that, this relationship between discovery and taxonomy is perhaps where the second part of this project is going.  This is going to mean determining methods creating a taxonomy.  I will have to start looking back at artists who create taxonomies.  Misako Inaoka is the first person that comes to mind.

what i saw in bakurocho and shinjuku

As the week came to an end, I took a list of the exhibitions that I wanted to see that were closing this weekend.  There are a few I may not get to, but I plotted my route on the train/subway and headed over to Bakurocho to see Lawrence Weiner's exhibition at Taro Nasu. During a conversation in the middle of my gallery hopping, I realised that I had not done a significant tour of galleries in this area for more than four, possibly five years.  In those intervening four or five years, the number of galleries has grown significantly and they are clustered close enough to each other for walking and eventually spending an entire day in the area.  Here is a map that I picked up of the still growing gallery scene in this area.

I headed to Taro Nasu first and it seemed to be closer to the Bakurocho station than I remembered.  Lawrence Weiner is one of the first conceptual artists that I discovered during my time during graduate school and he is well known for his text-based installations such as this on from 2012.

From the Lisson Gallery website

The title of his exhibition is "Water and Some of Its Forms" and this is the main work as you walk down the stairs into the gallery space.

From the Taro Nasu website

As you can see, he has combined English with Japanese for the installation.  To my recollection, this is first time that I have seen his work combine two languages so that their forms overlap.  In addition to this piece there was another larger wall piece, but what drew me were a series of more diagrammatic text based drawings.  One of which I snapped a photograph of below.

I climbed back up the stairs and walked next door and went to check out gallery αM in the basement.  Founded in 1988, gallery αM has its roots in the Musashino Art University, but shuttered its first location in Kichijoji in 2002.  Since 2002, gallery αM has hosted exhibitions by over 25 invited curators, each of whom explores a theme through a series of solo exhibitions.  The exhibition I happened upon was Volume 6: Censure Karasawa curated by Yuri Mitsuda from the DIC Kawamura Memorial Museum.  The theme of his seven exhibition project is "Mirror Behind Hole - Photography Into Sculpture"  Here are a couple images of what I saw in the space.

Karasawa's work is quite gorgeous.  The wood is meticulously cut into various forms and rather than leaving the form as such each piece is then cut open and then hollowed out.  He uses paraffin wax to fill in the hollowed space to give that space form.  He also uses the cross-sectioned wood forms and reconfigures them to emphasise the hollowed out space without the paraffin wax.  The theme of the project is quite interesting and I am interested in seeing what Volume 7 holds in store as well as revisiting previous volumes online.

From there I caught the elevator and headed up to the 4th floor to Kiyoyuki Kuwabara Accounting Gallery to see a small show by Shoji Ueda whom is one of my favourite Japanese photographers.  This gallery just opened at the end of January and is an accounting office and art gallery.  I wish I could tell you more about that, perhaps when I visit again.  In any case, there were 10 gorgeous prints from Ueda's White Wind photographic series along with the rare White Wind photo book.  The images for this series were take with the Vest Pocket Kodak which were also on display in the exhibition.  You can learn more about Ueda's amazing photography and numerous works in this Guardian article "Shōji Ueda: the most beautiful, surprising photobook of the year" from late 2015.  If you ever have a chance to see his color prints, run, don't walk and just bask in the soft light and sensuous colours!

From there, I realised I still had time before heading to Shinjuku and that Jinen Gallery was relatively close to where I was.  I wandered over there because I had been drawn to the exhibition postcard for Masahiro Imai's Historia Naturalis.  

From the Jinen Gallery website

There is definitely Joseph Cornell being channeled through this work.  The space at Jinen Gallery is usually split into two spaces for two person exhibitions, but Imai had the entire space to himself.  The front half of the space was devoted to work that made reference to Dylan Thomas biography, famous poem verse, 

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

and the motion picture Interstellar.  I do not know much about Dylan Thomas, but I have hear this verse often and even more interesting for my own process is that I have been meaning to rewatch Interstellar due to my revived interest in science fiction as well as my own processing of human mortality and beyond.  The materials that Imai uses for these boxed pieces stems from his vast collection of antiques which he had accumulated for years with giving thought to incorporating them into his artwork.  Historia Naturalis was the debut of these boxed pieces.  The coincidental convergence of the story of Historia Naturalis and my own interests jolted me life.  As I looked at the map of other galleries in the area, I had thoughts of venturing around, but ultimately decided this was a good note to end on.  I hopped back on the subway and headed to Shinjuku to attend the opening for the Narrative Abstract Art Vol. 6 group exhibition at the Art Complex Centre of Tokyo where Michelle Zacharias was debuting her dust paintings. Here a view of her work in the exhibition.

From Michelle Zacharias' Instagram account @m.zacharias.art

In response to her allergies and pervasive pollution, she has been collecting dust from various sources, filtering them and using the small dust particulates to create pigments which she uses to create her paintings which reference wind patterns which have a major impact on the severity of her allergies along with the pollution in the air.

Along with Michelle's work, the 29 other artists offered their individual takes on Narrative Abstract Art.  Here are a couple of other artists whose works I was drawn to.  

Chigira Shoko

From Chigira Shoko's Tumblr 

kan.i.

From kan.i.'s Instagram @kan_i_bun44880404

Yuuki Hashino

From Yuuki Hashino's Tumblr

Shohei Oyama - Click to see one of his works

Kojiro Itakura

From the Art Imagine website

Narrative Abstract Art Volume 6 concluded my gallery visits for the week.  There is a small chance, I will try and see one more show tomorrow as the theme is of great interest to me.  Otherwise, my next round of gallery visits will be next Friday.