Dan Isomura
Dan Isomura is a young visual artist whose distinctive fashion leaves a strong impression. Perhaps because he spent time doing residency work in Thailand during his student years, he also seems to take an interest in international social issues.
[Dan Isomura Profile]
Dan Isomura
Born in Tokyo in 1992; lives in Tokyo. Graduated in 2016 from the Oil Painting course, Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.
Graduated in 2017 from the 2nd term of the Genron Chaos*Lounge New Art School (received the Gold Prize upon graduation).
His major activities include solo exhibitions held while taking part in residency programs in London and Tokyo — “Two glasses of water / 2000000000000000000000000 water molecules” (The Vitrine, Central Saint Martins, London, 2017) and “A glass of water / 1000000000000000000000000 water molecules” (Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, 2017) — as well as participation in the “Geidaiko Art Project,” a pre-event of KENPOKU ART 2016: Ibaraki North Art Festival. Since 2016 he has also frequently hosted parties at his home, and in 2017 he presented “HOME PARTY#2” (Chaos*Lounge Gotanda Atelier, Tokyo, 2017), an installation that reconstructed and reinterpreted within a gallery space “HOME PARTY#1,” a party he had held together with Nepalese immigrants.
At present, Isomura gazes at the landscape of a turning point in globalism, creating installations and paintings that draw on the vernacular cultures and religious art of the homelands of the immigrants he meets in the places he visits and in Japan, as well as on physics and the aesthetics found on social media.
Solo Exhibition “Good Neighbors”
Dan Isomura’s solo exhibition “Good Neighbors” is positioned as the best-debut exhibition of the 2nd term of the Genron Chaos*Lounge New Art School. This time, the show was themed around “immigration,” a topic drawing attention amid Europe’s problems and the Trump administration.
The centerpiece of this show is an installation using water. Centered on five colorful boxes, it is a mechanism in which water flowing through hoses circulates from the bottom all the way to the top.
When I visited, the water had been turned off, but since I was curious I asked a staff member, who told me the machinery wasn’t in good condition and that they didn’t keep it powered on at all times. They kindly flipped the switch for me, and I was able to view it.
Flowing water is a great presence that rules over the Earth we live on. It serves as a lubricant that binds nations together, and it is an important keyword that becomes a precious travel route in times of migration. I filmed a short video.
Each box was apparently created in collaboration with Asian immigrants, young people who came to Japan with dreams, and Japanese who had spent much of their time abroad.
According to the staff member’s comment, the work evokes the box-based modes of expression left behind by the American contemporary artist Joseph Cornell and the late-Shōwa-era artist Tetsumi Kudo, as well as the expression of Yukinori Yanagi, famous for works in which ants gradually destroy national flags made of colored sand.
Small box-garden works in keeping with the theme were also on display. The fluffy, bulging sculptural work is “Leakage.” It is a piece that makes use of a mechanism in which sealed urethane expands and seeps out through the gaps. It seems to express something unpredictable and impossible to keep in balance.
Life vests (life-saving jackets), as if symbolizing migrants.
Partly because the small works were priced at 10,000 yen (excl. tax), many of them already bore “sold” marks.
Summary
Despite the socially heavy theme, he delivers his message gently, through a bright and tactile mode of expression — I felt his skill as an artist.
He may well be a gentle-hearted person, but if the younger generation keeps promoting this kind of communication, I’m sure the future will turn out to be a bright one.
