Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan

Seizo Tashima, Hachi & Seizo Tashima: Museum of Picture Book Art

To view contemporary art you generally head for a museum. But the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, an landscape-scale art festival held every three years in the Echigo-Tsumari region of Japan, offers a vastly different experience.
Echigo-Tsumari is an economically distressed region with a decreasing and aging population. It covers an area of roughly 760 square kilometers, including the Tokamachi City and the Tsunan Town. The Echigo-Tsumari Triennial was originally conceived as a sort of experiment in regional revitalization through art. The festival has also become known for its experimental approach to art production and display.
During the period of the Triennial, which runs from July 26 to September 13,2009, you may come across art no matter where you choose to go. There is art in the rice paddies and forests, in abandoned buildings, old schools and classrooms, and along the roads. Even if you look up at the sky, you are likely to find artwork.

Yasuo Terada, Collection of Soil

Many of the works on display are site-specific installations, produced by collaboration between elderly residents of the rural area and younger urban artists. Part of the festival’s goal is to cultivate the “joy of solidarity and collaboration” that has been lacking in much contemporary art. This spirit extends well beyond Japan. The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial has attracted increasing international attention and participation, and now includes artists from 38 countries and over 350 works.
China, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines join the Japanese artists in representing Asia. France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland and Lithuania, Croatia, Belgium and Finland present the diversity of Europe. The Americas are represented by Canada, US, Mexico and Brazil. Other artists include those from Australia, Egypt and Israel among others.
Some of the pieces on display have traveled the world, while others are permanent installations created during previous Triennials. More than 200 new artworks are on display for the 2009 festival. And there are the numerous continuing projects, like the one where you can write a letter to someone-or to yourself-to be collected at the next art festival to be held in three years time.

Haruo Higuma: Natural Feeling

Works are displayed in a variety of settings across a wide area, as explained on the Echigo-Tsumari Art Trienial website:
“In contrast to today’s obsession with rationalization and efficiency, instead of concentrating these works in one place, Echigo-Tsumari Triennial has adopted a blithely non-efficient – yet effective – way of scattering pieces across 200 communities. Visitors liberate their bodies and senses and feel the life of the community while visiting works of art that highlight the beauty and richness of the satoyama as well as the human time accumulated there.”
Some entries, like Henrik Hakansson’s “The Waves of Sounds” (2009) gives you an opportunity to listen to the sounds of nature. The visitor is enveloped in the sounds, collected through a high-precision recording device, as she sits with headphones, listening and noticing the many unexpected sounds found in nature.
The nature theme is predominant in the festival artworks. Haruo Higuma’s “Natural Feeling” (2009) is a house made both internally and externally of glass. Inside, drops of water gently fall down. Photographs on display capture the look of visitors as they think about the water drops. The artist asks you what communication is there between one’s self in the mirror and the people captured in the photographs.
In Shoko Fukuya’s “A piece of forest” (2009, Japan), hammocks are slung among the beech trees, creating a place to relax in the forest. Takeshi Kobayashi’s “A hut of earth” (2009) projects different images on the floor of a deep hole. All are photographs the artist shot on foot in Tsumari throughout the four seasons. Visitors can experience another side of Tsumari, using your eyes as the camera lens.
The art festival itself began ten years ago with a view to revitalize the region through raising its attractiveness and ability to transmit to the world. So it is natural that the other predominant theme of the festival is revitalization and breathing to life old and abandoned buildings. Seizo Tashima Hachi and Seizo Tashima Museum of Picture Book Art (2009) takes and has transformed a closed elementary school into a picture book museum. Picture book characters traverse the space freely, and a new story begins. There are many similar projects. Sometimes the buildings themselves become the art.
If you are visiting, make sure you have ample time. If not, you can view the entire collection of artwork and installations at the Echigo-Tsumari website. While there, take your time to learn more about the various projects that are part of the festival. It is sure to transform your idea of what art is, and what it could be.
Here are some addition images from the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2009:

Noriko Obara: Capsule of Reproduction

Kees Ouwens: Stone Forest. Stones attached to wooden poles.

Jenny Holzer: Nature Walk. Messages inscribed on stones along the path in the forest.

Stasys Eidrigevicius: The Visitors. Posters attached to masts.

Takeshi Kobayashi: A Hut of Earth. Photographic images projected onto the floor of a deep hole.

Akiko Iwai x Yoko Oba: Sound Park

Related posts:

1. Louisa Bufardeci and Zon Ito at MCA Sydney
2. THE STATE OF DESIGN 2008, Victoria’s Design Festival
3. India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art at MoCA Shanghai

Tags: Festivals, International, japan, Japanese Art

Category: Contemporary Art, International

Public Art in the Tenderloin

Cultural Geometry, Rigo 23 and Fernando Cardoso. Courtesy of the luggage store

Cultural Geometry is a new piece of public art by Rigo 23, the San Francisco-based political artist and muralist.  The work is a large stone mosaic which comprises the heart of the “Tenderloin National Forest”, a public space reclamation project led by the luggage store, a San Francisco arts organization.  Many years in development, the Tenderloin National Forest celebrated its official opening with a daylong celebration on May 9.
True to its name, Cultural Geometry weaves together multiple cultural histories in its visual and material elements, and in its situation in San Francisco’s diverse and highly urban Tenderloin district.  The physical/material history of the work begins in a limestone quarry in Porto de Mos, Portugal.  Over 30 tons of stone were excavated and shipped to San Francisco for the project. This video shows stone masons in Porto de Mos quarrying and sizing the stone that would be used by Rigo 23:
To help with the mosaic work, Rigo 23 enlisted the help of Portuguese calçada master Fernando Cardoso.  Cultural Geometry includes two long pathways on either side of the “forest” formerly known Cohen Alley, joined by a central rounded patio.  Geometric designs embedded in the linear walkways are derived from traditional basketry of the Ohlone Indians native to the Bay Area and Northern California.

Tenderloin National Forest

In contrast, the central plaza is dominated by a large figurative representation of a hummingbird in red marble.  According to the artist, the hummingbird was chosen because “it is a bird that is revered by many different cultures,” and also because it represents an element of nature that can often be seen in the new urban gardens of the Tenderloin National Forest.
The project website notes that Rigo 23′s  weaving together of European and Native American vernacular traditions in Cultural Geometry was undertaken “to honor and celebrate our ancestors and affirm the possibility of multiple worlds co-existing in time and place.”
“Cultural Geometry helps to formalize the transformation of Cohen Alley and symbolizes, to our very transitional and richly diverse neighborhood, a lasting engagement of the space with the community–a place for reflection, shared cultural activities and experiences.”
The Tenderloin National Forest installation also includes a diverse array of murals by a number of Bay Area artists, garden plantings, and gathering places encompassed by the pathways of Rigo 23′s mosaic. The site’s transformation from a waste-strewn, dead-end alley to a public art space is the result of over 20 years of effort by luggage store directors Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer.  This video tells the story of the project:
Portuguese-born Rigo 23 was the perfect choice for the Tenderloin National Forest mosaic.  The artist has lived in the Bay Area since the early 1990s and created a number of well known works of public art, often addressing political  or social justice issues.  His eight-story Ground/Sky mural adjacent to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was a local landmark, until it was removed by new construction in 2003.

Ground/Sky

While perhaps best known locally for his block letter or street sign-based murals, stone mosaic work has long been a part of Rigo 23′s practice in California and in Europe.  The artist is also featured in the Human/Nature exhibition running all summer at the Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive.
The Tenderloin National Forest and Cultural Geometry can now be visited every afternoon; gates are locked in the evening.  The site is adjacent to the luggage store 509 cultural center, at 509 Ellis Street between Hyde and Leavenworth.
Related posts:

1. Restoration in Public Art
2. San Francisco’s New Generation Galleries
3. Seattle Opens New Sculpture Park to Public
4. Industrial Design – Public Shelters

Tags: Bay Area, public art, rigo 23, san francisco

Category: Urbanity

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan

Faiza Butt: Get Out of My Dreams 1. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

The first major survey exhibition of Pakistani contemporary art opens this week at the Asia Society Museum in New York.  Titled Hanging Fire, the exhibition provides an important window into the creative energies of a country more often associated in the West with political conflict and social instability.
The show includes 55 works by 15 Pakistani artists, revealing a vibrant yet little-known contemporary art scene that has flourished over the past two decades in the world’s second-largest Muslim-majority country.  The exhibition is curated by the well-known Pakistani artist and curator Salima Hashmi.

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan includes a wide range of works including painting, photography, sculpture and video.  Some of the works have never before been exhibited, including a painting installation by Imran Qureshi. Other featured artists included Hamra Abbas, Bani Abidi, Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Faiza Butt, Imran Qureshi, Anwar Saeed, Ayaz Jokhio, Naiza Khan, Arif Mahmood, Huma Mulji, Asma Mundrawala, Rashid Rana, Ali Raza, Adeela Suleman and Mahreen Zuberi.

Adeela Suleman: Untitled. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

The works on display in Hanging Fire attest to a rich cultural heritage and vibrant contemporary art scene, informed by Pakistan’s cultural history of dissent and activism.  Throughout the country’s turbulent history since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has produced a diverse and productive group of artists, art educators, critics, curators and collectors.  Today Pakistani artists are having an increasing impact on the art world both regionally and globally.  Contemporary art in Pakistan weaves visual elemenets from ancient and colonial history together together with issues stemming from the country’s growing urban culture, regional cultures and conflicts, and religious fundamentalism.
A full color, 160-page publication, Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, accompanies the exhibition.  The show runs from September 10 to January 3, 2010, at the Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Avenue in New York.
Browse the mini-gallery below for more images from Hanging Fire.

Hamra Abbas: Ride 2. Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, and the Asia Society

Imran Qureshi: Moderate Enlightenment. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Zahour ul Akhlaq; A Visit to the Inner Sanctum 4. Courtesy of Richard Seck and Asia Society

Naiza Khan: Constellation of Attire. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Arif Mahmood: Young and the the Fearless. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Anwar Saeed: A Book of Imaginary Companions. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Asma Mundrdawala: Is You Is or Is You Ain't...? Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Huma Mulji: High Rise: Lake City Drive. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Ali Raza: No Two Burns Are the Same. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Related posts:

1. India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art at MoCA Shanghai
2. Louisa Bufardeci and Zon Ito at MCA Sydney
3. India Art Summit 2009 in New Delhi
4. Installation 5: International (and LA) Art in San Jose
5. Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan

Tags: Contemporary Art, exhibitions, Pakistan, Pakistani art

Category: Contemporary Art, International, Pakistani Art

Installation 5: International (and LA) Art in San Jose

Souther Salazar

Bay Area fans of urban contemporary art can check out Scion’s Installation 5 Art Tour, which arrives in San Jose this weekend after recent runs in New York, Phoenix, and Miami during Art Basel.  The traveling exhibition / arts fundraiser / major auto manufacturer promotional event includes work by an international cast of new contemporary and street artists, designers, illustrators and photographers.  An opening reception for the San Jose exhibition will be held Friday, June 5 from 8 p.m. – 12 a.m. at Gallery Anno Domini.
The powerful lineup includes Brazilian painter and multi-media artist Alex Hornest, legendary French stencil grafitti artist Blek le Rat, painter and modern iconographer Nicholas Harper, famed culture jammer and billboard liberator Ron English, composer and visual artist (and former Devo band member) Mark Mothersbaugh, illustrator and urban pop artist Yoskay Yamamoto, and Los Angeles-based painter Souther Salazar.  The show’s nine-city 2008-2009 tour will wrap up in September at the Scion Installation L.A. gallery in Culver City.
Not surprisingly given the sponsor,  the Los Angeles art scene is strongly represented.  The show should offer an intriguing look at the cross currents at play where contemporary art meets street culture meets money and corporate branding.  Figures such as LA’s Augustine Kofie, Patrick Martinez and Skypage all emerged as street artists before moving on to gain wider recognition in gallery shows and (in some cases) as corporate-sponsored designers.  Other southern California artists showing in Installation 5 include David O’Brien, Jeff Soto, Kelsey Brookes, Rob Abeyta Jr, Sage Vaughn and Todd Tourso.

Kofie: Untitled

For this year’s edition of the Installation tour, artists were asked to create literal, or non-literal interpretations of the theme ‘Self-Portraits’. In addition to paintings by over two dozen artists, the show also includes photography by the likes of Angela Boatwright, Jamal Shabazz, stencil artist Logan Hicks, Peter Beste, and Rick Rodney.  Video art is included for the first time since the tour began in 2003, including work by graphic artist and novelist David Choe, Tokyo-based designer Ian Lynam, and the Bay Area’s Peter Glover.
Last year’s Installation 4 tour raised over $50,000 on behalf of Art From Scrap, a Santa Barbara-based environmental and art education organization.  Funds from this year’s tour will be generated at the Scion Installation L.A. gallery show, where all of the Installation 5 tour artwork will go up for public auction.  All of the proceeds from Installation 5 go  the national artist support and funding organization Creative Capital.
Installation Five / Self Portraits runs from June 5^th – 20^th at Gallery Anno Domini, 366 S. First St, San Jose, CA 95113. Here are some more images…

Edwin Ushiro: Familiar Kiss of the Underground Sandstorm

Kelsey Brookes: Self Portrait

Tessar Lo: Untitled

Nicholas Harper: Bonjour Tristesse (Hello to Sorrow)

Andrew Schoultz

Yoskay Yamamoto: Quiet Flame

Blek le Rat: The God Father

Related posts:

1. The State of Design – International Speakers Announced

Tags: alex hornest, Bay Area Art, blek le rat, Contemporary Art, design, installation art tour, mark mothersbaugh, nicholas harper, ron english, souther salazar, street art

Category: Art News, Urbanity

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan

Faiza Butt: Get Out of My Dreams 1. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

The first major survey exhibition of Pakistani contemporary art opens this week at the Asia Society Museum in New York.  Titled Hanging Fire, the exhibition provides an important window into the creative energies of a country more often associated in the West with political conflict and social instability.
The show includes 55 works by 15 Pakistani artists, revealing a vibrant yet little-known contemporary art scene that has flourished over the past two decades in the world’s second-largest Muslim-majority country.  The exhibition is curated by the well-known Pakistani artist and curator Salima Hashmi.

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan includes a wide range of works including painting, photography, sculpture and video.  Some of the works have never before been exhibited, including a painting installation by Imran Qureshi. Other featured artists included Hamra Abbas, Bani Abidi, Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Faiza Butt, Imran Qureshi, Anwar Saeed, Ayaz Jokhio, Naiza Khan, Arif Mahmood, Huma Mulji, Asma Mundrawala, Rashid Rana, Ali Raza, Adeela Suleman and Mahreen Zuberi.

Adeela Suleman: Untitled. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

The works on display in Hanging Fire attest to a rich cultural heritage and vibrant contemporary art scene, informed by Pakistan’s cultural history of dissent and activism.  Throughout the country’s turbulent history since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has produced a diverse and productive group of artists, art educators, critics, curators and collectors.  Today Pakistani artists are having an increasing impact on the art world both regionally and globally.  Contemporary art in Pakistan weaves visual elemenets from ancient and colonial history together together with issues stemming from the country’s growing urban culture, regional cultures and conflicts, and religious fundamentalism.
A full color, 160-page publication, Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, accompanies the exhibition.  The show runs from September 10 to January 3, 2010, at the Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Avenue in New York.
Browse the mini-gallery below for more images from Hanging Fire.

Hamra Abbas: Ride 2. Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, and the Asia Society

Imran Qureshi: Moderate Enlightenment. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Zahour ul Akhlaq; A Visit to the Inner Sanctum 4. Courtesy of Richard Seck and Asia Society

Naiza Khan: Constellation of Attire. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Arif Mahmood: Young and the the Fearless. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Anwar Saeed: A Book of Imaginary Companions. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Asma Mundrdawala: Is You Is or Is You Ain't...? Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Huma Mulji: High Rise: Lake City Drive. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Ali Raza: No Two Burns Are the Same. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Related posts:

1. India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art at MoCA Shanghai
2. Louisa Bufardeci and Zon Ito at MCA Sydney
3. India Art Summit 2009 in New Delhi
4. Installation 5: International (and LA) Art in San Jose
5. Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan

Tags: Contemporary Art, exhibitions, Pakistan, Pakistani art

Category: Contemporary Art, International, Pakistani Art

Contemporary Art and Climate Change: RETHINK opens in Copenhagen

Tomas Seraceno, Biospheres

With growing urgency, contemporary artists from around the world have been responding to the issue of global climate change. Some spectacular examples of this work will be on display at a  major international exhibition of environmental and climate change-related art in Copenhagen, Denmark.
RETHINK: Contemporary Art and Climate Change opens October 31, and will be in full swing during the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.  The goal of the exhibition is to help provide politicians attending the meeting, as well as the general public, with new perspectives on some of the complex human issues stemming from global climate change.

Olafur Eliasson, Your Watercolor Machine

The exhibition features work by 26 important Nordic and international artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Henrik Hakansson and Tomas Saraceno. Works will be shown at a series of venues including the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art and the Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center.
Four distinct sections of the exhibition highlight different aspects of the climate change crisis.  RETHINK Relations focuses on issues of global interdependence, with artists exploring new kinds of experience, knowledge and sociality emerging through our unified human response to the problem. RETHINK the Implicit challenges notions of a fixed and unchanging reality, drawing attention to the changeability of phenomena we normally take for granted.

RETHINK Information highlights the role of information, in various forms, in shaping our apprehension of climate change and the kinds of responses that may be available to us. Finally, RETHINK Kakotopia investigates various dystopian and even utopian fantasies that have emerged in connection with climate change.
Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno presents Biospheres, 2009, a series of transparent globes inspired by scientific studies of cloud formation, soap bubbles and spider webs. Some of the biospheres float in the air; others contain plant-based ecosystems and largest allow visitors to step inside.
In Your Watercolor Machine, Olafur Eliasson creates an installation in which basic properties of light and color are captured through use of a spotlight, prism and reflecting pool of water.
Among other highlights of RETHINK: Contemporary Art and Climate Change:
Nigerian artist Bright Ugochukwu Eke uses water as a metaphor for the universal source of all life. His installation Acid Rain consists of numerous suspended, teardrop-shaped bags filled with water and carbon. The work reflects Bright’s experience with rain in polluted areas, particularly in the oil-producing regions of Nigeria.

Bright Ugochukwu Eke, Acid Rain

American artist Jennifer Allora and Cuban collaborator Guillermo Calzadilla will present  A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a video work comprised of footage taken in New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Like other work by Allora and Calzadilla, the film finds telling details that stand as metaphors for larger global realities.

Allora and Calzadilla

Swedish artist Henrik Hakansson will present Atmosphere, an audio and light installation featuring sounds from four synchronous recordings taken in the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico. Hakansson also presents his new film 7.AUG,2009 consisting of super slow-motion footage of butterflies fluttering against a blue sky.

Henrik Hakansson, Atmosphere

Dynasty by Icelandic Love Corporation is a video performance in which three women dressed in furs and expensive jewelry gather to mark “the final moments of one of the last snow-clad areas on Earth”.

Icelandic Love Corporation, Dynasty

Finnish artist Tea Mäkipää presents Link¸a new video work depicting the life of a half-human, half-ape character living on a small island in a remote part of Finland.

Tea Makipaa, Link

Kerstin Ergenzinger presents Study for Longing / Seeing, a reactive installation that moves in response to both seismograph data and the movements of visitors in the exhibition hall.

Kerstin Ergenzinger, Study for Longing / Seeing

Canadian artist Bill Burns presents a selection of his Safety Gear for Small Animals, consisting of safety vests, helmets, goggles and the like all scaled down to the size of mice, frogs and birds.

Bill Burns, Safety Gear for Small Animals

Cascade by New Zealand new-media artist Janine Randerson uses projected images and sounds extracted from scientific mapping software, as well as shared videos illustrating the impacts that climate change has on the survival of Arctic animals and the Arctic ecosystem.

Janine Randerson, Cascade

Hyperkinetic Kayak is an interactive installation by Danish artist Jette Gejl Kristensen that explores how the body senses and knows the world. The work consists of a kayak situated in a virtual 3D Greenland sea ice  landscape that is affected both by the paddler’s movements and by data on Greenland air temperature.

Jette Gejl Kristensen, Hyperkinetic Kayak

See more at http://www.rethinkclimate.org.
All images courtesy of RETHINK and the artists. Thanks.

Related posts:

1. Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan
2. India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art at MoCA Shanghai
3. Installation 5: International (and LA) Art in San Jose
4. Seattle Opens New Sculpture Park to Public
5. Human/Nature at the Berkeley Art Museum

Tags: art exhibitions, Art News, climate change, Contemporary Art, Environmental Art

Category: Art News, Environmental Art