Take Ninagawa, Tokyo
Solo Exhibition | October 30, 2021 – December 18, 2021
Shinro Ohtake, Mnemoscape, 2019 © Shinro Ohtake, courtesy of Take Ninagawa, Tokyo, photo by Kei Okano
Take Ninagawa is pleased to present an exhibition of works from Shinro Ohtake‘s newest project, “Mnemoscape.” Made with thick accretions of oil paint mixed with marble powder, sand, gravel, and other materials, and incorporating three-dimensional structures, “Mnemoscape” is driven by a search for what Ohtake refers to as “the scenes that remain at the end of memory.” Changing appearance according to the surrounding light and the viewer’s perspective, the works shift between flat painting, receding vitrine, and projecting architectural model. They identify the point where the limits of preservation prompt creative invention.
Shinro Ohtake
Born in Tokyo in 1955, and based in Uwajima and Tokyo, Shinro Ohtake is one of Japan’ s leading contemporary artists. Through his assemblages, collages, drawings, mixed-media paintings, sculptures, architectural projects, experimental films, and noise music, Ohtake has carried out a sustained interrogation of contemporary cultural production and its modes of circulation and reception. The formal engine of Ohtake’s practice is his ongoing Scrapbooks project, begun in 1977, in which scraps of ephemera and found materials are pasted into dense, quasi-sculptural books that also function as archival repositories of the artist’s world.
Currently preparing a large-scale retrospective for the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2022, Ohtake has held midcareer surveys at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2006); Fukuoka Art Museum (2007, toured to Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art); Takamatsu City Museum of Art (2013); Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (2013); and Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto (2019, toured to Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito). International solo exhibitions include the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1985); Artsonje Center, Seoul (2012); and Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London (2014).
In addition to dOCUMENTA (13), directed by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (2012), and the 55th Venice Biennale, directed by Massimiliano Gioni (2013), Ohtake has participated in major international exhibitions including Gwangju Biennale 2010; Setouchi Triennale 2013, 2016, and 2019; Yokohama Triennale 2014; and the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contmporary Art 2018.
Ohtake’s work has been exhibited in thematic surveys at institutions such as the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Seattle Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; Malmo Kunsthalle; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul; Asia Culture Center, Gwangju; Barbican Centre, London; Centre-Pompidou-Metz; Al Hamriyah Studios, Sharjah; National Museum of Art, Osaka; and Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, among many others.