Ocula Conversation Jess Johnson: Worlds Within Worlds Geometric patterns, anthropomorphic characters, architectural spatial environments, and relics of the ancient world appear throughout Jess Johnson's artworks.Johnson's solo art-ventures began in drawing, but her long-term collaborative relationship with animator Simon Ward brings her drawings to life in videos and virtual reality. The animator has...
Ocula Conversation Melati Suryodarmo: Performance Art as Trigger In 2012, Melati Suryodarmo opened Studio Plesungan in her native Surakarta, also known as Solo, the historic royal capital of the Mataram Empire of Java in Indonesia. Suryodarmo had returned to Indonesia from Germany, where she studied Butoh and choreography with Butoh dancer and choreographer Anzu Furukawa, time-based media with avantgarde...
Ocula Report Lagos Biennial 2019: Stories from Africa’s most Populous City 15 Nov 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Under the direction of Folakunle Oshun, the second edition of the Lagos Biennial (26 October–23 November 2019) includes works by over 40 Lagos-based and international artists, architects, and collectives. Curated by architect Tosin Oshinowo, curator and producer Oyindamola Fakeye, and assistant curator of photography at the Art Institute of...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Tatsuo Miyajima is one of Japan’s foremost sculptors and installation artists. Employing contemporary materials such as electric circuits, video, and computers, Miyajima’s supremely technological works have centred on his use of digital light-emitting diode (LED) counters, or ‘gadgets’ as he calls them, since the late 1980s. These numbers, flashing in continual and repetitious – though not necessarily sequential – cycles from 1 to 9, represent the journey from life to death, the finality of which is symbolized by ‘0’ or the zero point, which consequently never appears in his work. This theory derives partially from humanist ideas, the teachings of Buddhism, as well as from his core artistic concepts: ‘Keep Changing’, ‘Connect with All’, and ‘Goes on Forever’. Miyajima’s LED numerals have been presented in grids, towers, complex integrated groupings or circuits and as simple digital counters, but are all aligned with his interests in continuity, connection and eternity, as well as with the flow and span of time and space. ‘Time connects everything’, says Miyajima. ‘I want people to think about the universe and the human spirit.’
Ocula Conversation Sunjung Kim’s Real DMZ Project Interrogates the North and South Korea Divide Ongoing since 2012, the Real DMZ Project interrogates the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea through annual, research-based exhibitions that bring together the works of Korean and international artists. Sunjung Kim, the independent curator behind the project, conceived the idea of exploring the DMZ while curating Japanese artist...
Ocula Conversation Tatsuo Miyajima Artist, Japan Every artist has a lover. Yves Klein has blue. Louise Bourgeois has the spider. Ed Ruscha has words. The Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima has numbers; he paints them on the folds of bright kimonos, he draws them in sketchbooks, he fills walls, floors, pools of water and piles of coal with glowing numerals. His shirts are tailor made with numbers...
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Ocula Report 'Mission [Spacexart]: Beyond Cosmologies' And 'Chronicle 1995' At The Museum Of Contemporary Art, Tokyo 29 Jul 2014 : Annabel James for Ocula Too many Tokyoites miss the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) altogether. Beyond both the Ueno museums and the network of newer art spaces in Roppongi, this institution of first-class exhibition facilities, a vast pubic art library and one of the most significant global collections of contemporary Japanese art takes you by surprise in Old...
Related Press Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović lead major new exhibition Everything At Once at Store Studios The Vinyl Factory : 8 September 2017 This October, Store Studios will host Everything At Once, an extensive off-site exhibition featuring 24 artists currently shown at Lisson Gallery in celebration of its 50th anniversary.
Related Press 'Time, Light, Japan': Japanese art from the 1990s to now at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Art Radar Journal : 4 April 2017 From 17 December 2016 to 30 April 2017 the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney presents Time, light, Japan: Japanese art 1990s to now. The exhibition explores time and light through video, photography, sound and installation from the 1990s to now. Drawing from the gallery's collection, the exhibition brings together the works of eight Japanese...
Related Press Tatsuo Miyajima: connect with everything | time, light, japan: japanese art 1990s to now Artlink : 30 January 2017 It's something of a cliché in Western art history that canons shake when revolutions sound. Social change precipitates stylistic reinvention and the same can be said in reverse. Although they might gesture back, time and style share an aggressively forward momentum. Over a career spanning more than three decades, Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima has...
Related Press The Art of Numbers: Japan's Tatsuo Miyajima at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Art Radar Journal : 27 January 2017 Born in Tokyo in 1957 and based in Ibaraki, Japan, Tatsuo Miyajima is well-known for his sculptures and room-scale installations, which have as their centre point the use of light and numbers. He often incorporated contemporary technological materials such as electric circuits, video and computers. Since the late 1980s he has focused on LED...
