Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled. Interiors of a Victorian doll’s house, a rippled seascape, a palm tree forest, and a gravel seashore are superimposed, morphing into each other. The hermetic narrative is charged with psychological and mythological aspects. Hako reflects Sawa’s interests in psychotherapies, in particular, the sand tray therapy, also known as sandplay, created by Dora Kalff. Sandplay asks participants to create their own arrangement of objects in a sandbox by choosing from a wide range of small figures to which the subconscious attaches symbolic meanings. Echoing this process, Sawa creates his imaginary dimensions where rules and selected elements allow for improvisation and play to reveal unconscious processes. Certain elements give visual clues and metaphorically comment on issues such as the hybridity of the human and the non-human. This is indicated by walking trees and a miniature toy clock that is animated to keep real world time in order to ponder the illusionary concept of linear time. Reality is not scientific. As the fantastical becomes everyday and the supernatural becomes commonplace, so does the reverse.
London-based Japanese artist Hiraki Sawa’s video installations and filmic works probe landscapes, psychological dreamlands, domestic interiors, imaginary spaces, ideas of displacement and migration, and above all, the inner self. He weaves animals, people, plants, animated and inanimate objects into a series of surreal sequences to create enigmatic and immersive worlds of sound and image. Employing a combination of digital editing and hand-made methods of cutting, pasting and collaging, Sawa highlights the ambiguous boundaries between facts and fictions and meditates on how remembrance and memory can be manipulated by time, emotion and mental influences.
Yoneda’s Japanese House (2010) series of photographs depicts buildings constructed in Taiwan during the period of Japanese occupation, between 1895 and 1945...
Walking Through is one of a series of videos—sometimes humorous, often absurd—that record the artist’s performative interactions with objects in a particular site...
Tanaka’s unique understanding of objects and materials is reflected in the four photographs that document his Process of Blowing Flour ...
Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan...
State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism...
The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...
This artwork was part of a group of projects presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013...
In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
Made in cast bronze, Two Eyes Two Mouths provokes a strong sense of fleshiness as if manipulated by the hand of the artist pushing her fingers into wet clay or plaster to create gouges that represent eyes, mouths and the female reproductive organ...
Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...
This work presents the image of an immolated monk engraved on a baseball bat...
The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...
Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...
A residency program in the blazing hot city of Honda, Colombia, inspired artist Nicolás Consuegra to consider the difficulty in understanding the needs of a distant community...
Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...