FEATURES
I. Yutaka Sone: The Patience of Materials
Yutaka Sone is best known for his marble sculptures of landscapes ranging from Hong Kong Island to imagined alpine scenes, as well as his “snow flake” works in crystal. However, employing materials that have taken milennia to come into being, and producing objects that seemingly uphold traditional ideals of eternal art, Sone embodies a contradiction in that he values above all else spontaneity and spends as much time generating ephemera such as notes and sketches as he does finished products. More.
II. Danh Vo: A Five-Part Dossier on How Things Live
In August 2010 ART iT met with the artist Danh Vo in Los Angeles, where he was preparing material for his first ever solo show in the US at Artists Space, New York, on view from September 15 to November 7 of that year. The material from that interview has been edited and reimagined as a collection of five thematic spaces – or encounters – relevant to the discussion of Vo’s work. More.
INTERVIEWS
I. Miranda July: You Are Doing Good My Dear
ART iT: This issue of ART iT addresses the theme “Text,” looking not only at artists who use text in their works but also artists who look at how the world communicates with us, and how we decode the world. Thinking about the idea of text – coding and decoding – what is communication to you?
MJ: Communication is really my main comfort in life. More.
II. Tadasu Takamine: From the Mouth or in the Mouth but not of the Mouth
Starting his career with the seminal performance group Dumb Type, Tadasu Takamine is known not so much for a particular style or practice but rather for the diversity of the approaches and media that he uses from work to work. This makes him difficult to characterize as an artist, although one recurring theme is Takamine’s investigation into the relations between body and mediation, expression and self-awareness. More.
COLUMNS
I. Noi Sawaragi: A deep, black hole inside of ‘me’ (part I)
Norimizu Ameya’s The shape of me was an official artwork at last year’s Festival/Tokyo 10 performing arts festival. It had neither script nor actors and wasn’t performed on a stage, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t theatre. In fact, the flyers promoting shape of me clearly stated, “Concept/Direction: Norimizu Ameya.” More.
II. Kyoichi Tsuzuki: Outsider Calligraphy
Held at the National Art Center, Tokyo, the 42nd Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten) ran from late October to the beginning of December 2010, and is now touring nationwide. Despite being Japan’s largest art exhibition…this is one mega-art event that remains steadfastly ignored by the contemporary art media. More.
III. To Enter a Void: A letter from Hans Ulrich Obrist to Hou Hanru
Thanks so much for your letter and the fascinating words on Zheng Guogu. His land project can be connected to Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “The Land” and many other artist-organized initiatives that propose different models of living. Your letter made me think of Absalon (1964-93), who at around the time when you and I first met proposed his own radical model of living. More.
EDITOR’S TABLE
I DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS: Issue 8 TEXT
Perhaps the most efficient means of communication yet invented by humans, text is also inherently saddled with confusion and contradiction. When commentators wring their hands about contemporary knowlege spinning out of control with the circulation of virally reproduced and distorted digital information, we should all pause to recall that as the genesis of recorded history, text is the original quotational artifact. More.