06/18/2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Transient Existence | June 21, 2019 – July 14, 2019
We are not eternal, we are mortal
We can move through space, but cannot travel through time
We are only transient beings
We desire, therefore, to connect the dots through time by visiting several spaces
Four Japanese Artists have all lived as immigrants in either England, Germany, or the United States. Although they had met each other at different times in Germany, they had never assembled as one group before their reunion in the United States in 2018 where they shared their experiences of living outside Japan, in foreign countries. At their reunion, they shared their experiences, alternating between life in Japan and abroad. Through these discussions, they found common ground: they all have “transient existences,” a term, they realized, applies to them both as immigrants and as mortal beings.
ArtObjectGallery
592 N. 5th Street, San Jose, CA 95112 408-288-9305, 408-384-1610
Artists: Aisuke Kondo, Takeshi Moro, Yukiko Nagakura, Kaori Yamash*ta
Opening reception: June 21, (Fri) 5pm-8pm
Hours: Sat & San, Noon-5pm and by appointment
In this show, four Japanese artists express their artworks based on interdisciplinary approaches: historical research, fieldwork, and artistic methodology.
Aisuke Kondo
was born and raised in Japan and currently based in Germany. Kondo explores questions of belonging, identity, memory, and history across a variety of media, from collage and gallery installation to video and performance. In 2008, he completed a Meisterschüler in Fine Art at Berlin University of Arts. After his graduation, he received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to research his great-grandfather who was incarcerated at Topaz concentration camp in Utah during World War II. Currently, he is working in the Bay Area on a grant from the Cultural Affairs Agency in Japan as a visiting scholar at San Francisco State University. In his current “Matter and Memory” series (2017-present), Kondo retraces his great-grandfather’s life as an immigrant in the US from his arrival in the early 1900s. Kondo has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Turnaround, Sendai, Japan (2018), Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin (2018), MINTMOUE, Los Angeles (2017) TAM - Tokyo Art Museum, Tokyo (2016) and Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto (2016).
Takeshi Moro
was born in Fukaya, Japan and spent most of his childhood in the UK. Moro attended Brown University, where he double majored in Economics and Visual Arts. He worked in the fields of corporate finance before receiving his M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Moro's work primarily utilizes lens-based media, such as photography and video. For the past decade, he has focused on working with communities and the collaborative process of art making. He is currently Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University. He is the founder and director of tmoro projects, a 501(c)(3) non-profit community art space in the Bay Area. He has participated in fellowships and residencies in Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, and South Korea. Moro’s work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2011) and Serlachius Museot, Finland (2013).
Yukiko Nagakura
was born in Shizuoka, Japan, and currently works and lives in Berlin, Germany. As a visual artist working on installation and performance, Nagakura’s interest include ecology and gender issues. Following the tragic Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Nagakura moved to Europe, where she was a guest student in Hito Steyerl’s classes at University of Art, Berlin. In 2017 Nagakura completed a Master of Art under the supervision of Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann in Fine Art and Political Theory at the department of Spatial Strategies at the Weißensee School of Art in Berlin. Her artwork reflects her multidisciplinary and holistic approach to art in taking into consideration social, political, and cultural issues, and in particular, the question of gender inequality in Japan. Her work has been exhibited at institutions and project spaces such as Atelierhaus Australische Botschaft (Berlin, 2018), Weißensee School of Art (Berlin, 2016), Neue Galerie Landshut (Landshut, 2015). Additionally, she has performed with several artists who also engaged in a social, political, and cultural interpretation of modern art.
Kaori Yamash*ta
was born and raised in Japan and currently based in San Francisco. Her site-specific installations consist of elements such as sculptural objects, drawings, photographs, etc. They are usually placed in a particular environment in a rather unexpected yet precise way that makes each element purposely relate with each other, and hold a quality that could blur the confidence within the existence of physical matter. Recent exhibitions include: Remote Ancestors, Bass & Reiner, San Francisco (2017), Leaves Without Routes, Nanmoncyo323, Taipei (2016), letter from the distant beyond, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2015), Image of the Memory, Memory of the Image, BankART NYK, Yokohama (2014), Under Thread, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (2007), First Steps: Emerging Artists from Japan, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2003), among others. She will be exhibiting at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, July through December, 2019.
