About the Exhibition

Winter turns to spring, summer turns to autumn. We sense the shifts not just by the changes in the temperature and the scenery, but in the smells carried on the breeze and the quality of the sunlight. Over two thirds of Japan's population lives in its cities, which make up just a small fraction of its landmass. And yet we are still able to read nature with our bodies.
Japan's temperate climate and its mountainous topography gave birth to a unique natural environment, which in turn fostered an ancient cosmology and spirituality which have greatly influenced our culture and arts. In "Sensing Nature: Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro, Kuribayashi Takashi" we think about how the innate human ability to perceive nature (to sense nature) and the Japanese view of nature exist in our urbanized and modernized world. We also ask how those views are reflected in contemporary art and design practices. Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro and Kuribayashi Takashi are three internationally active artists/designers who give abstract or symbolic expression to immaterial or amorphous concepts as well as natural phenomenon such as snow, water, wind, light, stars, mountains, waterfalls and forests. Their ideas of nature suggest that it is not something that is to be contrasted with the human world, but that it is something that incorporates all life-forms, including human-beings. Their works hint that we have inherited this all-encompassing cosmology deep in our memories and in our DNA.
Consisting of newly commissioned works by each of the three participant artists, the exhibition attempts to stimulate our sense of nature through large-scale installations with visitors’ physical experiences with their entire bodies.

YOSHIOKA TOKUJIN

Born 1967. Yoshioka established the Yoshioka Tokujin Design Office after working under Kuramata Shiro and then Miyake Issey. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which has his paper chair, “Honey-pop,” and “TFU,” the lighting fixture in which he designed light itself. In 2007, Yoshioka was named “Designer of the Year” at Design Miami. He has also appeared in television broadcaster NHK’s “Professional: Shigoto no Ryugi” (The professional’s way of working) and he was selected by the Japanese edition of Newsweek as one of the “100 most respected Japanese around the world.”
Yoshioka is well known for dynamic spatial designs, which, despite being made with artificial materials, give us the sensation of experiencing light, snow, storms and other natural phenomena. He is currently exploring the future potential of design to incorporate natural principles and effects and to integrate natural science technologies.

Website: www.tokujin.com

SHINODA TARO

Born 1964. Shinoda originally studied Japanese landscape gardening, and for years he has been working on the theme of the "connection between man and nature," directing his attention at everything from the human spirit to the universe at large. In recent years, Shinoda has been concerned with human beings and their connections with their contemporary living environments, which are the sum products of urban landscapes, convenience and technological developments. He is interested in the “process by which our lives, society and culture tend to make nature into an entirely abstract concept.” In this exhibition, Shinoda presents three works, including a new video trilogy called "Reverberation". He has held solo exhibitions at REDCAT (Los Angeles), Hiroshima City Museum for Contemporary Art and elsewhere, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 2006 Busan Biennale and 2007 Istanbul Biennale.

Website: www.taroshinoda.net

KURIBAYASHI TAKASHI

Born 1968. Kuribayashi graduated from Musashino Art University in 1993 and Kunstakademie Dusseldorf (Germany) in 2002. Having studied nihonga, Kuribayashi has always been interested in spaces where some kind of border or series of layers divides the world into different zones. He endeavors to recreate such locations in three-dimensional installations. Animals such as seals and penguins, which often appear in his works, are used as symbols of the divide between two distinct worlds, such as between the underwater world and the above-water world. Viewers are able to experience the multiple viewpoints that such animals have.
Kuribayashi has held solo exhibitions at various locations including the Kolnisches Stadt Museum, Cologne, in 2003 and has also participated in several international exhibitions including "Thermocline of Art - New Asian Waves" (ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany) and Singapore Biennale in 2006.

Website: www.takakuri.net