Participating artists: Taro Izumi, Menja Stevenson, Tokihiro Sato
May 27 (Saturday) – August 27 (Sunday), 2017
Tokihiro Sato, An hour exposure 1990/2017 Tokyo – Shibuya, 2017 photograph/diptich
Exhibition Outline
Mercedes-Benz Japan has sponsored Mercedes-Benz Art Scope since 1991, a mécénat activity that gives contemporary artists from Japan and Germany a chance to experience a different culture. The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art has been a partner in this program since 2003, providing a venue to showcase the artistic results.
This year’s show features three artists: Japanese artist Taro Izumi who resided in Berlin in 2016, German artist Menja Stevenson who resided in Tokyo in 2015 and Japanese artist Tokihiro Sato, a past participant who spent his residence in France in 1993 and was invited this time as a guest artist. Izumi will show video works made during his stay in Berlin and video installations interlaced with strange and humorous elements based on ideas that came from his travel abroad. Stevenson will show photographs, conceptual monotypes (prints) and other works produced during her stay in Tokyo and works based on her encounters with contemporary and traditional Japan. Sato will show previous images taken of places in Tokyo together with images taken again of the same places (but with different methods) to contrast changes in his creative expression and Tokyo’s past and present.
What happens when three artists with different styles and approaches are let loose in Tokyo or Berlin with a camera in hand and a mission to create? We invite you to see the results.
Participating Artists
Taro Izumi [Video installation]
– Interweaving images to create strange spaces –
Taro Izumi creates drawings, image installations and video. Though many of his videos feature Izumi himself performing, other performers are sometimes invited to appear as well. The actions in these works seem to represent “games” or “play” that alternate between meaning and nonsense. They are characterized by a peculiar blurring of the line that separates reality and fiction and an intermingling of elements both amusing and puzzling. In this way, they might be seen as a light that reveals the unconsciousness, customs, conventions and rules–both clear and shadowy–that lie at the bottom of society, as well as their relativistic nature. For this exhibition, Izumi will show video works shot during his stay in Berlin and a new video installation inspired by his experience of air travel.
Taro Izumi, Footprint of melted sorbet, 2017 mixed media
©Taro Izumi photo: Keizo Kioku
Taro Izumi, installation view at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017 (reference image) ©Taro Izumi Courtesy of Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo
Photo: André Morin Photo provided by: Palais de Tokyo
Taro Izumi, The piercing wink of the star that is not visible, 2017 (reference image)
Profile: Born in 1976 in Nara, Japan, Izumi received an MFA at Tama Art University. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad, including the Yokohama Triennale (2011) and Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art at the Hara Museum (2009). His solo exhibition Taro Izumi — Pan was held at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in spring of this year. Izumi currently lives in Tokyo.
Menja Stevenson [Photography, monotype, other]
– Observing the “old” and “now” in a different culture –
Based in Stuttgart in southern Germany, Menja Stevenson’s works range over a wide variety of mediums that include video, photography, drawing and objets. Her overarching themes might be called the acts of “discovering” and “collecting.” Using various mediums, she records the trivial things and phenomena encounted in the minutiae of everyday life, turning them into art by tweeking them and at times incorporating her own performance. For Stevenson, it was her first trip to Japan, and so she carried her camera on walks that she took around Tokyo. What she produced were images based on the daily fragments that she collected, as well as a series of slightly twisted monotypes (prints) inspired by Japanese ukiyoe prints, a representation of the idea that tradition equals “Japan” as a “foreign culture.” These richly colored and ostensibly abstract monotypes simultaneously reveal the deepness of multilayered time of which that culture is constituted.
Menja Stevenson, I would like to be come cat, 2017 photograph 70 x 100 cm
Menja Stevenson, e / The Master’s Table, 2015 monotype/from a set of 12 191 x 97 cm each
Profile: Born in 1982 in Rottweil, Land Baden-Württemberg in Germany, Stevenson studied media art at the Stuttgart Academy of Art and Design. She works in a variety of mediums such as photography, performance and installation. She currently lives in Stuttgart.
Tokihiro Sato [Photography]
– Camera snippets of “myself” and “Tokyo” before and after –
Tokihiro Sato is an artist who practices photography (a word that literally means “painting with light”). At first glance, his work appears to be different from that of the two artists above. The commonality lies, however, in the physical performance of the artist that occurs in front of the camera, by which he produced Photo-Respiration, his representative series of the ’80s to the ’90s. In these magical images of places in Tokyo, as well as many others in Japan and abroad, only the trajectory of light from a hand-held source or reflecting mirror is recorded. The artist himself is absent since a moving body leaves no trace on film during very long exposures. (Work from this series was presented in Art Scope in 1993). These images do not “record” reality. Unlike images perceived with the human eye, what is depicted may be thought of as “movement” or “trajectory.” In the present exhibition, images of places in Tokyo from the Photo-Respiration series taken at the beginning of the ‘90s will be displayed together with images taken again of the same places (but with different methods) to contrast the old and new in Sato’s creative expression and Tokyo’s appearance.
Tokihiro Sato, An hour exposure 2017 Tokyo – Akihabara, 2017 photograph
Profile: Born in 1957 in Yamagata, Japan, Sato received a BFA and MFA from the Tokyo University of the Arts. He has received numerous awards include the Minister of Education Award (2015) and has held solo exhibitions at such museums as the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2014 and The Art Institute of Chicago in the USA (2005). He has participated in group exhibitions that include Photography and Beyond in Japan held at the Hara Museum (1994), which traveled to six venues within North America), 12 years of Art Scope: Reflection on Artist in Residence (2003), and Time Present – Photography from the Deutsche Bank Collection (2015). He lives in Saitama and is currently a professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition title: Mercedes-Benz Art Scope 2015-2017: Wandering to Wonder
Dates: May 27 (Saturday) – August 27 (Sunday), 2017
Venue: Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, 4-7-25 Kitashinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0001
Tel: 03-3445-0651 Fax: 03-3473-0104 E-mail: info@haramuseum.or.jp
Website: http://www.haramuseum.or.jp Mobile site: http://mobile.haramuseum.or.jp
Blog: https://www.art-it.asia/en/u/HaraMuseum_e Twitter http://twitter.com/haramuseum (in Japanese only/ Account name: ＠haramuseum)
Organized by: Hara Museum of Contemporary Art and Mercedes-Benz Japan, Co., Ltd.
Under the auspices of: Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Japan
Cooperation and residency program coordination provided by: Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT]
Participating artists: Taro Izumi, Menja Stevenson, Tokihiro Sato
Hours: 11:00 am-5:00 pm, Wednesdays until 8:00 pm (last entry 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (except July17), July 18
Admission: General 1,100 yen; Students 700 yen (high school and university) or 500 yen (elementary and junior high); Free for Hara Museum members and students through high school every Saturday during the school term; 100 yen discount per person for groups of 20 or more
Directions: 5 minutes by taxi or 15 minutes on foot from JR Shinagawa Station (Takanawa exit); or from the same station take the No.96 bus, get off at the first stop (Gotenyama) and walk 3 minutes. During the exhibition, a Mercedes-Benz V-Class (with a capacity of six persons) will provide free transport between Shinagawa Station Takanawa Exit (JR and Keikyu) and the Hara Museum on Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays. Please visit the Hara Museum website and blog for details.
* On Sundays and public holidays, a guided tour of the exhibition will be given by the curator in charge (lasting approximately 30 minutes, starting at 2:30 pm).
Free mini-tours in English are also available on a periodic basis. Please enquire at the admission counter on the day of your visit.
Related Events
[1] Artist Talk (with consecutive Japanese/English interpretation)
May 27 (Saturday), 2017, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Place: The Hall at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
Speakers: Taro Izumi, Menja Stevenson, Tokihiro Sato / Moderator: Atsuo Yasuda (deputy director, curator / Hara Museum of Contemporary Art)
Capacity: 80
Fee: General 900 yen; Hara Museum member and up to two accompanying persons 500 yen each; free admission for students through middle school
*Requires museum admission.
How to make a reservation: Please send an email as follows: write “Artist Talk” on the subject line and your name, phone number and number of persons in your party in the body of the email.
[2] Workshop
During the exhibition, participating artist Tokihiro Sato will hold a hands-on workshop that both parent and child can take part in.
*NOTE: Details of the events will be announced at a later date. Reservations are required and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Exhibition Catalogue
A catalogue with photos of the exhibition (installation views) will be published during the exhibition.
The volume will be in full color and include both Japanese and English texts.
Free Shuttle Service from Shinagawa Station to be provided during the Exhibition (on Saturdays, Sundays, and national holidays).
A Mercedes-Benz V-Class (with a capacity of six persons) will transport passengers between Shinagawa Station (JR and Keikyu) and the Hara Museum.
Schedule(on Saturday, Sunday and national holiday, from 5/27 until 8/27):
From Shinagawa Station Takagawa Exit
11:00/45, 12:30, 13:15, 14:00/35, 15:10/45, 16:20
From Hara Museum
11:25, 12:10/55, 13:40, 14:15/50, 15:25, 16:00/40, 17:05
Where to get the shuttle from Shinagawa Station (Takanawa exit): coming out of the station, turn left on the big street in front of you, walk past several bus stops until you see the following sign.
About Mercedes-Benz Art Scope
This program was launched in 1991 under the name Art Scope and the Hara Museum has been a partner since 2003. Starting with the present exhibition, the program has been renamed Mercedes·Benz Art Scope.
As its main points, the program seeks to promote the development of contemporary art and the exchange of culture between Japan and Europe by providing an artist-in-residence experience of approximately 3 months in Berlin for Japanese artists and in Tokyo for German artists, and organizing and holding a group exhibition featuring the participating artists at the Hara Museum to present the results of their experience.
In addition to the name change, it was decided that one past participant of the program would be invited as a guest artist. It was thought that by showcasing the recent work of past participants, a light would be shone on the trajectory of their post-residence careers, and therefore on the program’s history and evolution of more than a quarter of a century.
In recent years, artist-in-residence programs have been flourishing throughout the world as a means of enabling individual artists to create work or conduct research for that purpose for a given period of time and to deepen cultural exchange at the place of residence. In Japan, municipalities, NPOs and other bodies have been actively engaged in such activities since the 1990s.
The following is a list of previous Art Scope exhibitions held at the Hara Museum.
2014
Art Scope 2012-2014 – Remains of Their Journeys
Participating artists: Ryosuke Imamura, Satoshi Ohno, Rita Hensen, Benedikt Partenheimer
2011
Art Scope 2009-2011: Invisible Memories
Participating artists: Meiro Koizumi, Hiroe Saeki, Eva Berendes, Jan Scharrelmann
2008
Art Scope 2007 / 2008 – Faces of Existence*
Participating artists: Izumi Kato, Yuken Teruya, Eva Teppe, Ascan Pinckernelle
2006
Art Scope 2005 / 2006 – Interface Complex*
Participating artists: Hiroharu Mori, Kohei Nawa, Katja Strunz, Georg Winter
2005
Art Scope 2004: Cityscape into Art – Michiko Shoji Johannes Wohnseifer
Participating artists: Michiko Shoji, Johannes Wohnseifer
Before the Hara Museum’s partnership began, Art Scope was a program that sent only Japanese artists to Monflanquin in the south of France. The artists who participated during this period are as follows.
Satoko Masuda (1991), Ko Kashiwagi (1992), Tokihiro Sato (1993), Kenjiro Okazaki (1994), Keita Egami (1995), Seigen Kyu (1996), Asako Tokitsu (1997), Takanobu Kobayashi (1998), Yasuko Iba (1999), Tomoko Maekawa (2000), Sayaka Akiyama (2001), Nobuyuki Takahashi (2002)
To mark the start of the Hara Museum’s partnership, the twelve artists were featured in 12 Years of Art Scope: Reflection on Artist in Residence which was held in 2003.
A star (★) is used to indicate exhibitions that were also held at Daimler Contemporary, the contemporary art gallery operated by Daimler AG in Berlin.
