Unattained Landscapes
1 June–20 October, 2013
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11h–18h
Preview: 29–31 May 2013
Palazzetto Tito of Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation
Dorsoduro 2826, Venezia
The Japan Foundation
www.jpf.go.jp
Participants:
Marina Abramović, Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Simon Fujiwara, Meiro Koizumi, Hiroya Oku, Jim O’Rourke, David Peace, Shuji Terayama, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tomoko Yoneda
Timed to coincide with the Venice Biennale’s 55th International Art Exhibition, The Japan Foundation will present a special exhibition titled Unattained Landscape in conjunction with the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation. Focusing on the theme of identity in Japanese culture, the event will consist of works by both Japanese and foreign artists representing a wide range of genres, including contemporary art, graphic design, literature, film, sound, and manga. In organizing this exhibition, The Japan Foundation aims to foster greater global international understanding, transmit information about Japanese culture, and contribute to international cultural activities.
Concept
Unattained Landscape is an exhibition that promotes art and cultural exchanges held within The Japan Foundation to ultimately reflect contemporary creation by reconsidering and questioning the islands of Japan as potential models for contemporary culture. How can this vast and dispersed land be home to a common culture? How might it invoke common sensations in those who visit? How does this inform judgment on communities, however scattered and fragmented, on a global scale?
Unattained Landscape challenges the archipelago—the land in its contemporary form, and whatever it means to belong to a community, including the conditions of formation and its relation to a territory. As nations are perpetually made or unmade, and as they subsequently mark territories with new physical boundaries, mental and temporal maps imperceptibly emerge to create invisible, discontinuous territories that transcend notions of a ‘nation.’ These maps reveal an imaginary version of Japan; they convey desires and paradigms of a country represented not only by a group of cities, poetry, games or food, but by a fusion of fantasies invoked and inspired by Japanese and non-Japanese minds and films.
Artists invited to take part in the exhibition will contribute to opening new insights in an attempt to answer these questions. The exhibition will feature the work of Japanese and international artists from multiple creative fields: visual art, graphic design, cartoon, literature, performance, sound and film. Ultimately, Unattained Landscape proposes an overlapping of skills, attitudes and disciplines that promotes a way beyond the repetitive format of traditional contemporary art exhibitions. This renewed curatorial approach functions as the best way of describing the hectic changes within Japanese identity, and it is a microcosm that illustrates worldwide changes in how global communities choose to conceive, represent, and live life.
Organizers
The Japan Foundation
Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation
Curators
Didier Faustino, architect and artist
Akiko Miyake, co-founder and program director of Center for Contemporary Art, CCA Kitakyushu
Angela Vettese, president of Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, City of Venice
Assistant curators
Sumi Hayashi, independent curator
Sachiko Namba, independent curator
Exhibition design
Bureau des Mésarchitectures
Catalogue & graphic design
Zak Group
In cooperation with
Center for Contemporary Art, CCA Kitakyushu
Supported by
NEC Display Solutions Ltd., Kikkoman Corporation,
Kagoshima Sake and Shochu Makers Association,
JFC Deutschland GmbH
For further information about the show, please contact
Tae Mori, Yoko Oyamada
The Japan Foundation
Europe, Middle East and Africa Section, Arts and Culture Dept.
venezia [at] jpf.go.jp
Press Contact:
Akiko Onishi, The Japan Foundation
venezia [at] jpf.go.jp
Giorgia Gallina Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation
press [at] bevilacqualamasa.it
www.bevilacqualamasa.it
*Images above: Top left: Simon Fujiwara, The Personal Effects of Theo Grünberg, 2010. Installation
view, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf. © 2010 Simon Fujiwara, Courtesy Hamburger
Kunsthalle. Top right: Tomoko Yoneda, Former house of General Wang Shu-ming, the Chief of Staff under Chiang Kai-Shek, Cidong Street, I, 2010. © the artist. Courtesy ShugoArts. Bottom left: Meiro Koizumi, City of Poem and Bleed (still), 2013. © Meiro Koizumi, 2013. Bottom right: Shuji Terayama, advertisement poster for Tenjō Sajiki’s Subscribers, 1967. Silkscreen on paper, 103 x 72.8 cm. Design by Yokoo Tadanori.
