The group exhibition ”ShimoumArt REVISITED - Eight years after” echoes a series of shows, which started eight years ago in the restaurant “Gardenn kitchen” in Shimouma, showing now new works by the same artists. 14 artists are participating.
The idea of the shows was to bring young art out to an audience, specifically to an audience different from the traditional gallery and museum visitors. The motto of the exhibition was “Art should be part of our life, our everyday life”, thus being accessible for everybody and presenting art in and for private homes.
From the beginning the exhibition concentrated on young artists, mostly educated at the well renowned art universities like Gedai, Zokei , Musashino, but was also open to Japanese students from foreign schools and autodidacts. Western style as well as traditional Japanese. Painting as well as photography, sculpture as well as installation.
The artists were mainly born in the 1970ties, eighties and early nineties, the youngest being 19 years old at the time of the first ShimoumArt exhibition. They represent a generation of contemporary Japanese artists in all their diversity.
The painters are AZUSA KOMODA, who developed her traditional education to a timeless, yet modern expression, FUMITOSHI ETO, whose work often reflects a traditional Japanese surrounding in surprising new ways, YOKO NAKAO, who is concentrating on the human face and paints portraits, that stay on one ́s mind, MANABU YAMAGUCHI, whose work often shows the loneliness of the individual, MIWAKO SATAKE, in spontaneous work depicting people in unusual situations, but is also working with sculpture, EI OZAWA, the youngest, who started portraying seemingly himself as a young boy, is now experimenting with different motives and techniques .
The artist SHOKO MIKI is much occupied by the environment and works with different media, as does the sculptor SHOTARO YOSHINO, whose work depicts the relation between the human and nature, often relating to the site and its history, where it is created, and who, as well as installation artist TAKASHI NAKAJIMA, won acclaim at the show “No man ́s Land” at the French embassy in Tokyo in 2009, who takes with his installations possession of a space and changes its impression in a continuous process completely. AKIRA NISHITAKE is active on the zine scene as well as at home in traditional galleries, his style relates with its humoristic absurdities to the the world of symbols, but also to comics and Manga. And MINAKO ISHIKAWA, whose work catches the light the graduation of light in her unique technique.
Photographer SHINGO KANAGAWA won international acclaim at Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair in 2010, just before he participated in the first ShimoumArt exhibition. He started with photographing his father, approaching him through a series of sensible portraits. SHO OHASHI, who also is cinematographer, works with cityscapes as well as portraits, which emanate tranquility. HIROSHI ODAGAWA has a distinctive eye for very sensible depictions of human relations.
The artists were discovered by the curator of this exhibition in very different places: at art galleries, at shows like Ultra, Gesai, at Spiral, BANKART in Yokohama, at art fairs or through
recommendation by other artists, always looking for the individual artist, often with something indefinable Japanese in her or his work.
This diversity was what appealed to the curator, art historian Dr.GEORG ALBRECHT MAI, who started as a collector, being fascinated by the inventiveness, fantasy and technical skills of the young artists. Coming from Europe, he was deeply impressed by the individuality of the artistic personality, who seemed not to follow any trends or fashion, but developed each and everyone their own universe.
MARISA SHIMAMOTO, who is also a renowned photographer and participant in an earlier ShimoumArt exhibition, supported the exhibition as an invaluable coordinator, while the curator was in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The artists and their curator are honored and grateful to ASPLUND and their management for appreciating the ShimoumArt motto about art being part of life, the everyday life and hosting this exhibition.
The exhibition will be open May 17th at SHOP ASPLUND from May17th to May 27th. Opening hours 11:00-20:00,
Opening party will be held on May 18th Friday from 18:00-21:00. Most of the artists will be present as well as the curator flying in from Denmark.
