As we died, we began to regain our spirit

Chiho Aoshima

Exposición: Nov 16, 2006 – Ene 14, 2007


Con su proyecto de Artpace, Chiho Aoshima amplía aún más sus ideas acerca de las relaciones complejas entre la naturaleza, los humanos, la mortalidad, e industria a través de una acuarela instalada en la pared – primera vez para el artista.

Mientras moríamos, comenzamos a recuperar nuestro espíritu se estira a través de su pared de cuarenta pies y se extiende del piso al techo. Refiriéndose a una práctica de hace siglos de hacer pantallas decorativas en Japón, los parches de papel tejido aprovechan del espacio expansivo, vertical y horizontal a representar un lugar idealizado y desatado rodeado por nubes desapegadas del mundo.

El enfoque en este trabajo es la resistencia de la naturaleza ante un futuro condenado y sobreurbanizado, un tema recurrente en el trabajo de un artista. Las fotografías digitalmente retorcidas de edificios de San Antonio llenan la pared, sus «cuerpos» de figuras encajan en caras con ojos anchos de femeninas inocentes. Un lavado de acuarelas silenciadas y el lápiz de color articula labios y pestañas para combinar fluídamente al humano con el industrial. Éstas estructuras femeninas flotan entre andanas divinas de la naturaleza: los remolinos de la vegetación vaporosa ruedan en las ondas del agua que sostiene suavemente la metrópoli espiritualizada, viva con solamente los fantasmas de la civilización.

Mientras nos moríamos, comenzamos a recuperar nuestro espíritu que refleja la creencia cultural de San Antonio en el alma animada, pero sugiere más ampliamente que a pesar de la condenación inminente de ciudades como las conocemos, la naturaleza continúe prosperando. Esta persistencia ofrece esperanza. Mientras se continúe encontrando el valor en el pasado, el trabajo de Chiho Aoshima mira hacia un futuro complejo que se queda hermosamente balanceado por lo orgánico. -Kate Green

 

Artista

Chiho Aoshima

Tokyo, Japan

Chiho Aoshima’s murals feature birds, flowers, ghosts, and demons colorfully infused with traditions of Japanese comics, animation, and landscape painting. Though deeply informed by art history, this fantasy world of desire and terror looks forward to a mechanized future envisioned through a 21st-century vocabulary of computer-generated imagery.
Aoshima draws on the expanse and tranquility found in historical Japanese scroll painting while permeating each image with contemporary elements including an abundance of female protagonists and stylistic references to manga (comic books). The digitally saturated archival paper of Magma Spirit Explodes Tsunami is Dreadful (2004) fills an entire wall. The titular doe-eyed character explodes with fiery energy, indifferent to a city nearby being ravaged by a watery disaster. Panoramic in scope, the work seems alive: feisty women fly in the background and flames appear to breathe. Aoshima’s use of color, symmetry, and anthropomorphism turns the apocalyptic into the cathartic, the chaotic into the calm, and the futuristic into a natural state of being.
Chiho Aoshima was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1974 and continues to lives there. She received an economics degree from Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1995. She has had solo exhibitions at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2006); Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France (2006); and University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, CA (2003). Her work has been included in exhibitions such as Rising Sun, Melting Moon, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2006); Ecstasy: In and About Altered States, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2005); and Little Boy, Japan Society, New York, NY (2005).

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Curador

Tom Eccles

New York, NY

Tom Eccles is the Executive Director of Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies. Prior to that appointment, Eccles served as Director of the Public Art Fund, New York, NY since 1996. While at the Public Art Fund, Eccles defined new directions for the creation and installation of contemporary art in public spaces, organizing engaging exhibitions with artists such as Vito Acconci, Mark Dion, Christine Hill, Kim Sooja, Olav Westphalen, and former Artpace residents Teresita Fernández and Paul Pfeiffer. Eccles holds an MA in Philosophy and Italian from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and has lectured at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

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