Tobia Farnetti, Koichiro Kutsuna, Daniel Lipp, Soji Shimizu, Tetsuya Tajima, Urara Tsuchiya and Nobuo Yoda

Venue:  Midori.so, Tokyo
Dates:  13 – 27 June, 2015

Curation:  Soji Shimizu, Nobuo Yoda
Cooperation:  Aingeru Aroz-Rafael, Tomoji Oya, Southard Reid Gallery
Photo:  Yusuke Sunaga

The word “Itch” has several meanings. In this exhibition, it acts somehow like a hub airport, gathering quite different works. Are the works in the show heading to the airport via the “itchiness” or is it through a “yearning”? Is the airport itself the final destination? “Itch” is in a changing status.

Koichiro Kutsuna depicts the trajectories of aircrafts that streak over artificial landscapes through long exposure. Kutsuna has established his own style in work where shooting conditions are in conflict with what is predictable.
Now, apart of such Kutsuna-style photographs, he also has work carried out under different motivations. In this show, it is precisely a non-Kutsuna-style photograph that is presented. The itch in the intertwining between individual and society makes the photograph a work full of suggestions.

Tetsuya Tajima exhibits the documentation of actions he perfomed repeatedly in 1997.
“It was about 15 years ago. I went all over Japan for business. I would always stay in gray business-hotels. After finishing work and dinner with my colleagues, I started doing ‘it’ at the room. Getting rid of the mattress and prop it up on the wall, turn the TV upside down, putting the phone turned over on the floor… And I took pictures of the room. There weren’t digital cameras those days. I used disposable cameras. Then I would put everything back as if nothing had happened, and next morning check out the hotel with a nonchalant expression on my face.

Soji Shimizu focuses on physical structure and the process of making a painting. He is also interested in altering the balance of each element within such structures and layering other types of stories on the making process. This time Shimizu is showing two closely linked paintings, one of them exhibited in Midoriso, and the other one shown in other exhibition that is happening in the same period. Apart of the painting, Shimizu has installed a structure that seeks to make the works and the space of the exhibition interfere with, intervene into each other.

Nobuo Yoda composes a collage, working with his interest on novels and films on the one hand, and the attention for the inevitability and arbitrariness of the movements of our points of views in our daily life on the other. In the work, Yoda treats the act of cutting, hanging, placing, tracing etc. in a drawing-like manner, attempting to portray a certain mentality, or perhaps fabricate it.

Tobia Farnetti and Nobuo Yoda share their interest for the performative character of art and literature. Through this collaboration, they seek to grasp the sketch of a certain character or persona. Yoda, who is interested in the position of the author as a performative locus, and Farnetti have maintained an exchange, through conversation and through sending each other packages. Without setting any particular final, this became the resource to form of an object (or perhaps conditions), and perhaps approach its potential collapse.

Tsuchiya’s practice explores the disconcertion that can be found between the personal and social worlds. Her work includes creating performances, videos, and live events. She often incorporates soft sculptures, costumes, masks, and home cooking. These function as props in an alternate environment that make space for different behavior. She is interested in challenging the viewer to negotiate his or her own personal and physical boundaries. This time, the costume on view has no “wearer”. This time within the existence of other artists and viewers, and occasional appearance of people depicted in other works, this absence suggest a “potential wearer”, conducting to form multiple relations in the show.

Neither flat images nor traditionally defined sculptural entities, Daniel Lipp’s works exist in an in-between space, on the cross of different media and disciplines. Two works exhibited in this show are from a series containing references to an unidentified past. In the series we encounter bodies at rest, slumped,exhausted, intoxicated, they refuse to answer our gaze. Images are also repeated, folded and cut into as raw material. At times the treatment of images feels violent and sexually charged – looking suggested as a violent act.