FACES
For me, play is the biggest deciding factor...it's one of the most important elements of human life.
--Michael Ende
How many of our daily experiences are left to chance encounters and chance contact? "FACES" explores the connections between people and things, including physical proximity and distance, and the perceptions and resonances that arise when we come into contact. The concept, originally conceived for the music event and exhibition "MUSIC TODAY HAYAMA / FACES," scheduled for last spring at the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, was canceled due to the pandemic, but was reimagined by the artists afterward, and continues to function as a space for dialogue connecting remote interactions through the exchange of postcards and letters. Collaborative design and improvisational gestures are skillfully woven into the project.
Shuta Hasunuma uses environmental conditions to explore the origins and meaning of "sound" in our daily lives . In his 2019 New York installation "Someone's public and private / Something's public and private," a score and a water bottle placed in a park transformed the surrounding sound and space. His new installation, FACES (2021), is composed of brass fragments discarded during the musical instrument manufacturing process, reconstructing the conditions under which sound is produced through the contact of materials. The entire wall is covered with metal fragments that exude a sharp golden shine. These fragments, which do not have the sound expected of musical instruments, recover the sound of the materials themselves through contact. This work evokes the formative aspects of sound, while also looking at the human-made environment and beyond.
Hiroshi Isogai 's interventions into subjects and the sounds they accompany continue in his photographic work, "Bringing Sounds" (2019-2021). Isogai has previously created sharp situational compositions and intellectual puzzles using familiar materials gleaned from his everyday surroundings, such as landscapes captured on his iPhone. In this work, the presented images challenge the viewer to recreate sounds that must have been present in their memory or fantasy. This rearrangement of sounds and images makes our perception of the present seem uncertain, and the cleverly framed framework of thought calls into question the idea of a timeline that moves unidirectionally from past to future.
Elena Tutatchikova 's ongoing journey renews her perception of the world. Her installation of hand-drawn maps, drawings, photographs, and videos depicts a journey she took with a boy this summer. Confirming their own existence, keeping both feet on the ground, and continuing within the physical limitations and speed of their own journey, the two share a mutually understood experience of a new land. In this moment, walking simultaneously grasps time and space, becoming a comprehensive medium that guides thought and imagination, giving geographical breadth and musical rhythm to the theme of this exhibition, where things come into contact and form relationships.
While there is only so much we can bring back to reality from the world of dreams we encounter every day, perhaps the gateway to understanding lies hidden in the time we spend facing these mysterious events. Okada Osamu responds to this complex theme of deepening encounters and connections through ceramic sculptures painstakingly crafted from porcelain clay. These humorous sculptures, which blend symbolic symbols such as plants, coral, fingertips, and rope, are carved with a quiet power that seems to engulf reality and dreams. Their organic and bizarre forms, colors, and lustrous, rich expressions appear before the viewer as brand new encounters, like newly hatched organisms, urging them to look.
In the shadows where things meet and various expressions come and go, some things are forgotten and receding into the distance. Exploring the relationships between unexpected events can shed light on the conditions and constraints of today's society. This exhibition resonates with discoveries lost in everyday perception, such as small encounters with the unknown, and attempts to reclaim the realm of play, a process of diverse understanding. Now, with the flow of people and chance suppressed, it is the expansion of these chance encounters and relationships that is being considered. The reasons for this are revealed in the form of sound, image, and space.