Koki Tanaka
Artist of the Year 2015
www.deutsche-bank-kunsthalle.com
Deutsche Bank has announced its Artist of the Year 2015: the Japanese Koki Tanaka follows Wangechi Mutu (Kenya), Yto Barrada (France/Morocco), Roman Ondák (Slovakia), Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), and Victor Man (Romania) as the sixth international artist to be honored with this award. In the spring of 2015, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin presents Tanaka’s first major solo show in Europe.
A focus on young art: like its corporate collection, Deutsche Bank’s award, the Artist of the Year, is committed to the present. The aim is to acquaint a wide public with new and exciting artistic positions. The award honors artists who have already amassed a substantial œuvre and have blazed new trails both formally and in terms of content. The highlight of the program is a solo show in the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, accompanied by an extensive catalogue.
“Koki Tanaka is one of the most original artists of his generation to emerge on the global art scene in the last decade,” as Hou Hanru, artistic director of the MAXXI in Rome, explains the jury’s selection. “A shrewd observer of the most ‘indifferent’ matters of the everyday, he always manages to magically transform them into fantastic events with a sense of humor, offering open but pungent implications that reveal the uncanniness of existence. On the other hand, Tanaka, a global trotter, is also a savvy mobilizer of collective actions and encourages sharing and exchange among participants to produce a common sense of creativity and imagination while probing new rules of negotiation and collaboration. Tanaka’s work represents an inventive approach toward exploring the question of community making—a truly important issue in today’s aesthetic and political experiments across the world.”
The award was given on the recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council, comprised, along with Hou Hanru, of the renowned curators Okwui Enwezor, Udo Kittelmann, and Victoria Noorthoorn, who met under the chairmanship of Stefan Krause, the Deutsche Bank board member in charge of the global art program, among other things.
Koki Tanaka, born 1975 in Tochigi, Japan, lives and works in Los Angeles. He became known through his installations and actions, in which he implements everyday objects and material found on site. A major part of his work consists of participatory projects that incorporate actors and exhibition viewers. Tanaka is concerned with communication, power, and ethics—as well as with the aesthetic and form of the collaboratively produced work of art. Tanaka represented Japan at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
Currently, works by Koki Tanaka can be seen in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.
Journal
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London
June 25—September 7
Positions — Five projects in dialogue
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
July 5—October 12
More information at art.db.com and db-artmag.com.
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