[Title] White Discharge
[Artist] Teppei Kaneuji
[Date] July 22 – September 14, 2010
Applying white plaster to common everyday items, the fragments of city life picked up, purchased or otherwise assembled. The result is the enclosure of time, essence and other elements, transporting the treated objects into a totally different and distant domain. Interacting with these pieces of city existence are Hermès creations. Adrift, yet standing out vividly against the snow-white world backdrop. In a sense, the products exist as representatives of the real world, while they likewise materialize images steeped in the element of fantasy.
Common everyday wares, each instilled with exclusive meaning and use. Brought into this world by a multitude of human creators, projecting totally different stories and properties. Reborn without alteration in shape or form, resurfaced, as such, into a single collective presence exuding properties rooted in a separate visual dimension. Refusing to deny individual nature, although chosen exclusively from the perspective of size and contour in the course of transformation. In this way, the everyday goods assume the mantle of other entities, linked wholly through the sharing of identical whitewashed façades. This distinctly envisions the vagueness inherent in the meaning of “solid matter,” while underscoring the blurred borders where multitudes of entities coexist in harmony.
Therein stand Hermès creations. Ostensibly immune to the frailty of the flow and phenomenon expressed by the plaster, as it trickles down to fully sheath the everyday objects. The contrast between the plaster covered aggregate, and the Hermès products placed within, is tantamount to the appearance of colorful creatures in silvery-mantled woods, or the rush of new life in a dark and crumbling city scene. At the same time, this can also be seen as a metaphor of the enduring devotion of Hermès craftsmanship, persistently resisting change within the constant flow of time. In this case, portrayed by the white plaster landscape.
Teppei Kaneuji
Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1978. Kaneuji studied at the Royal College of Art in London from 2001, going on to complete program coursework at the Graduate School in Art at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2003. From his boyhood days, he found himself absorbed with clay modeling, the art of fashioning stuffed toys and other creative pursuits. Today his works span genres ranging from sculpture, drawing, installation and more, and are displayed widely in exhibitions held in galleries, art museums and other venues in Japan and abroad.