“FIXED CONTAINED” at KOTARO NUKAGA
We visited “FIXED CONTAINED,” a group exhibition curated by artist Tomokazu Matsuyama. The venue is the gallery “KOTARO NUKAGA” on the third floor of Terrada Art Complex in Tennoz.
This exhibition, curated by Tomokazu Matsuyama, is a group show of seven artists based in the United States.
The participating artists are the following seven: Brian Alfred, Firelei Báez, Carlos Rolón, Inka Essenhigh, Nir Hod, Tony Matelli, and Tomokazu Matsuyama.
The artists featured in “FIXED CONTAINED” deftly employ a variety of media and, through their respective expressions of decorativeness and flatness, produce works that project the complexity and layered quality of the era in which we live. They deliberately quote and rework (Fixed) stylistic patterns and useful information from their own cultures, histories, and contemporary society, breathing new meaning into them. There, elements such as pattern, sensuality, and saturation mix in original ways, and the expression that overflows from works that are like high-density vessels (Contained) hints at unknown territory.
・Alfred’s paintings use flatness and abstract lines to bring the skeleton of urban landscapes into relief and depict the social structures visible therein.
・Essenhigh uses forms of flora, fauna, and architecture organically to generate fantastical, brand-new, unknown landscapes.
・Báez layers patterns rooted in her own heritage, painting portraits of women with a fluid and strong spirituality grounded in cultural and historical backgrounds, asserting future possibilities.
・Matelli’s sculptural works use materials such as marble and painted bronze, combining classical sculptural styles with commonplace everyday objects, evoking the contradictions and eternity that lie between art and reality.
・Rolón depicts flowers and patterns reminiscent of ancient Asian bird-and-flower painting against flat backgrounds of gold leaf or mirror, rendering them as an orderly chaos as if seen through a kaleidoscope.
・Hod, using a pigment medium of his own invention, depicts luminous mirror surfaces, and by hazily projecting the viewer’s image into the work, prompts viewers themselves to question the meaning of art.
・Matsuyama fuses everyday image sources such as advertising that flood our lives with traditional iconography, employing a contemporaneous vision to create the “now” in which different cultures mingle.Transcending the framework of functionality/non-functionality that decorativeness carries, these works present new possibilities for decorative beauty.
The acts of reworking and editing require deep knowledge of and respect for the past, and the artists show that this process is one of the best ways to open a breakthrough in our information-saturated contemporary society. — excerpted from the statement
Tomokazu Matsuyama, who brought along artists active in America — the epicenter of contemporary art — to create an opportunity for an exhibition in Japan.
Encountering cutting-edge contemporary artworks produced there was hugely stimulating.
