Keisuke Yamamoto/ solo exhibition “Clouds in the Center of the Earth”
8/ ART GALLERY/ Tomio Koyama Gallery, Shibuya Hikarie 8F
May 24 – June 26, 2017
Venue hours : 11am – 8pm
Open everyday during exhibitions
Free Admission
Opening reception: Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 6pm-8pm
*Artist talk: Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 7pm-
http://www.hikarie8.com/artgallery/2017/05/keisuke-yamamoto.shtml
Keisuke Yamamoto continues to develop his artistic practice traversing sculpture and painting. His works exhibited here display Yamamoto’s unique talent within which elements of the natural world such as plants, minerals and climate, and spiritual entities such as the human imagination become interfused with each other, resulting in a mysterious atmosphere. In his paintings imagery appears in ambiguous forms, as abstract elements and the textures and colors of paint are combined: an approach perhaps focusing upon a vision with the quality of things seen in dreams. Further, in Yamamoto’s sculpture in recent years he finds affinities within abandoned objects or junk, and attempts to bring a sense of “existence as things” back to them in the form of coexistence, each piece gaining attention for its indigenous elements.
This is his first solo exhibition in two years and mainly features Yamamoto’s sculptural works that were created in dialogue with the nature in Mount Rokko, and exhibited in the mountain in the exhibition “Rokko Meets Art 2016” (Hyogo, Japan), as well as sculptures and drawings created with similar inspirations. Yamamoto’s work looks like fragments of fantasy at first sight, yet it actually results from the reconstruction of the real world in his attempt to acquire a more authentic understanding, after having objectively analyzed himself. The processes of stimulation from the external world and inner self are merged into each other, by which process the true individuality of the work grows apparent, and the gradations that appear when the fantastic world is connected with the real world attract the attention of viewers. Yamamoto earnestly addresses the nature of the relationship between himself and the world that is always changing according to different situations and thoughts, and has continued in an endeavored process of trial and error to realize his artistic expressions.
Brâncuşi found eternity, and the liberation of the image, in the sky. I find affinity in the soil and earth. I should perhaps call it an unavoidable gravity or something compulsive. If so, I want to find something pure from the depths of the earth that is different from flying. Belief in and awe for the land, time and history as strata, nutrients and microbes, lifelines, chemical artifacts. I want to see clouds floating lightly and freely in the chaotic dark at the center of the earth. (Keisuke Yamamoto)
Keisuke Yamamoto was born in 1979 in Tokyo. After graduating from the department of Sculpture of Tokyo Zokei University in 2001 he stayed at the university as a research student until 2003. He currently lives and works in Kanagawa. This show at Tomio Koyama Gallery is his sixth solo exhibition, and his major group exhibitions include “VOCA 2008” (2008, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo), “Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art” (2009, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, traveled to several international museums), “Twist and Shout: Contemporary Art from Japan” (2009, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre), and “Nostalgia and Fantasy: Imagination and Its Origins in Contemporary Art” (2014, National Museum of Art, Osaka). His work is collected by the National Museum of Art, Osaka and international private collections.