(c) Mircea Cantor, 2018
Exhibition Period: 25 April (Wednesday) – 22 July (Sunday), 2018
Mon-Sat 11:00-20:00 (Last entry 19:30),
Sun 11:00-19:00 (Last entry 18:30)
Open daily (Except New Year holidays)
Free admission
Venue： Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum
（8F, 5-4-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan TEL: 03-3569-3300）
Organized by: Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Equipment provided by: Canon Marketing Japan Inc.
Under the auspices of: Embassy of France/Institut français du Japon
Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum is pleased to present an exhibition of Paris-based artist Mircea Cantor. Born in 1977 in Romania, Cantor creates singularly poetic works that generate transparent distances and spaces, highlighting the complexity and uncertainty of the world we inhabit. In Japan, his work has been shown at Yokohama Triennale 2011, Ichihara Art x Mix 2014 and elsewhere, and he has held solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou (2012, Marcel Duchamp Prize exhibition), the Museum of the Moving Image (New York, 2012), and Kunsthaus Zürich (2009).
For the video work Deeparture (2005), Cantor released a deer and a wolf in a plain white gallery space, and the resulting observation of the perilous, unnatural tension between animals isolated from nature caused a stir. In another video piece, Tracking Happiness (2009), which was shown in Japan, beautiful girls wearing pure white dresses walk in a circle on white sand, while sweeping the footprints with brooms, in a slow, hypnotic ritual. Using simple materials and minimal gestures, the artist raises a range of questions that circulate at the micro and macro level, delivering experiences with a profound physical and emotional impact, such as the drawing Chaplet (2007), reminiscent of barbed wire rendered with the artist’s fingerprints, and Rosace (2007), a sculpture resembling a rose window made of empty aluminum cans.
In his first solo exhibition in Japan, Adjective to your presence, Cantor presents a new work inspired by the transparency of the glass blocks at Ginza Maison Hermès. A video in which people march with transparent placards was filmed at various locations in Tokyo. In this work, which relates to his The landscape is changing filmed in Albania in 2003, the crowd of people holding “transparent statements” generates poetic moments amid the everyday Tokyo street scene. In an installation combining dozens of aluminum wind chimes and glass folding screens, stillness and resonating chimes evoke memories and emotions invisible to the eyes, like gusts of wind making transparent ripples in the minds of viewers.
All of us are unconsciously bound by transparent forces such as rules, customs, and authority. Here, Mircea Cantor compellingly explores the horizons that define the individual’s presence in an uncertain world, through simple questions about the adjectives that describe “you.”
Mircea Cantor
Born in 1977 in Romania. Lives and works on Earth. Produces works in media including photography, sculpture, video, and installation that use modest gestures to illustrate the complexity and uncertainty of our daily lives. Major solo exhibitions include Your Ruins Are My Flag (Giuliani Foundation, Rome, 2017-2018) and Tracking Happiness (Kunsthaus Zürich, 2009). In Japan, he has participated in multiple exhibitions including Yokohama Triennale 2011 and Will Happiness Find Me? (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2014). Recipient of many awards including the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2011); Prix Fondation d’entreprise Ricard (2004). Works are in collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Museum of Modern Art, New York and Rennie Collection, Vancouver.