Friday, January 10, 2025

Shimabuku at MUSEION of Trendy and Up to date Artwork Bolzano

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A quote from Muhammad Ali, the pithy title of Shimabuku’s most up-to-date exhibition—“Me, We”—attracts consideration to the relational qualities of the artist’s work. Though this quirky midcareer retrospective eschews a chronological presentation, it nonetheless begins with photographic works documenting Shimabuku’s earliest performances, actions, and ephemeral assemblages, relationship again to the Nineties. Tour of Europe with One Eyebrow Shaved, 1991, for instance, noticed the Japanese artist touring by a dozen European nations for so long as it took for his eyebrow to develop again. The lacking eyebrow helped the artist to interrupt the ice with fellow vacationers alongside the best way.

Journeys characteristic prominently in Shimabuku’s itinerant observe, and never all of his journey companions are human. For Cucumber Journey, 2000, he sailed for 2 weeks on a canal from London to Birmingham, utilizing the time onboard to discover ways to pickle cucumbers—a “sluggish meals” course of eminently suited to the tempo of journey on a barge. Shimabuku has taken multiple octopus out for a stroll (see the video piece Then, I Determined to Give a Tour of Tokyo to the Octopus from Akashi, 2000, or the poster sequence With Octopus, 1990–2010), along with creating sculptural objects for the aquatic animals to interact with (Sculpture for Octopuses: Exploring for Their Favourite Colours, 2010). In Shimabuku’s Fish & Chips, 2006, among the many most poetic choices on view, the artist orchestrated an encounter between a fish and a potato that seems to be swimming of its personal accord. He accompanied the 8-mm movie of this underwater scene with a tongue-in-cheek neon signal spelling out the work’s title.

The highest flooring of the museum showcases the newest works, together with these produced for this exhibition, akin to Me, We, 2023, a site-specific set up confronting fragments of two native buildings scaled for demolition and renovation, relationship respectively from the thirteenth and the early-twentieth century, and the glazed ceramic piece Moon and Potato, 2023, whose twin protagonists seem on equal footing in opposition to a jet-black backdrop. The pairings attest to Shimabuku’s uncanny capability to attract out hidden affinities between disparate objects.

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