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understanding of misunderstanding

Solo Exhibition at cafe SLOPE,  Kamiigusa, Tokyo

understanding of misunderstanding (mixed media)
shadow drawing hanakaido (lithograph)
one place of six moments (digital print)





















understanding of misunderstanding

年明けに白寿を迎えた祖母は、痴呆の症状が進んでいるのに反して益々表情に豊かさを増している。祖母は介護老人ホームや病院を移り住む状況下でも、懐かしい山や祖父の面影をいつも窓越しに探すことができるのだ。昨年の夏、病院の窓から入る強い日差しの中で、私は車椅子の彼女と一緒に外に広がる景色を見ていた。実際は調布から西の方角を望んでいたのだが、「阿蘇の山が見えるわね、とてもきれいだわ。」とうっとりつぶやく彼女を見ているうちに、私も一瞬、自分が何時の何処にいるのか分からなくなってしまった。彼女の理解は誤っていると理解していたのにも関わらず。

これを機に、美術に対する私自身の姿勢について改めて考えてみた。郷愁や信仰心、または欲望や恐怖心といったものは、私達の見え方だけでなく、それぞれが住む世界をも違うものにするのではないだろうか。しかし、実社会がこれらの要因を善悪を基準に識別し、過度に抑制することも事実であろう。一方、美術のフィールドでは、人間の視点や世界観に関わるこれらのファクターを‘想像力’と結びつけ、更には、私達を一瞬にして異なる時空間に移動させる‘動力’に変えることが可能かもしれない。あらゆる場所、時代、条件の下で実験と失敗が繰り返される、知的で且つ美的な運動として、私は美術を捉え直すことにした。

本展では、私自身の想像力に起因していると思われる視覚的認識を扱っている。影や反射として認識されるイメージが、実在は無いのに存在感を放っていると感じられるのは、私の想像力が作用しているところが大きいだろう。例えば、窓枠やカメラレンズにフレームされた景色や、コンピューターやスマートフォンに映し出されたイメージ、あるいは紙面に納められた絵といったものは、その目的とはほぼ無関係に、私の想像力を介して一つの風景に半ば無理矢理に繋げられようとしている。また、この店では「Look for the Silver Lining」がよくかかるのだが、雲の裏側で銀色に輝く光を歌うこの曲に誘われ、私は目前のぼんやり白い壁の裏側にある何かについてよく想像している。

20134月    進藤詩子

My grandmother has just turned 99 years old earlier this year. Her dementia is progressing, yet despite this she is ever more expressive. Though she often has to move from one nursing home to another, she is always able to search for her familiar mountain or the shadow of her husband from any window. Last summer, I was looking at the scenery out of hospital window with my grandmother in her wheel chair. In reality, we were viewing the direction to the west of Chofu City, but I heard her say in raptures, "We can see Mt. Aso there, so beautiful", and, for a moment, I became lost in time and space, despite my understanding of her misunderstanding.

Through this experience I was brought to reconsider my own attitude towards art. Our particular sense of nostalgia, belief, desire or fear may be discerned as a factor that differentiates not only the way we see things, but the world we live in. It is also true that our society categorizes these factors into good or bad, and in some cases even unduly suppresses them. In contrast, in the art field these factors are connected to the idea of 'imagination', and it can further transform them into a 'force of movement' - a force which transposes us to another time and space in a moment. Upon this understanding I came to recognize art as a drive of the intellect and aesthetics, which is placed in a repeated state of trial and error under the dictates of each place, era and condition.

In this exhibition, I deal with the visual perception which seems to be derive from my own imagination. My particular attraction to a strong sense of "presence" in images of shadow or reflection, despite their essential "absence", is perhaps a working of my imagination. Here such views framed by windows or camera lenses, images from computer or smartphone screens, and pictures contained within a sheet of paper, despite their various purposes, are forcibly connected into one landscape through my imagination. While at the same time, in this cafe where the song "Look for the Silver Lining" is often played, I imagine what may be on the other side of the white wall in front of me, like the silver lining behind a cloud.

April 2013   Utako Shindo
















selected exhibitions

selected curatorial projects

biography

Tokyo, Japan
Born in Tokyo 1980, based in Tokyo and Melbourne. She is currently undertaking her PHD at the Centre of Ideas, Melbourne University. Her works explore the uncertainty, in other words the potentiality, of human's visual perception of time and space. In the context of installation art practice, she intends to realise visceral visualisation of one place that triggers one's perception of another. Her practice across to curation, coordination and direction of projects/art spaces. She was a committee member of West Space (Melbourne) and a chief staff member of Youkobo Art Space (Tokyo). Her curatorial project 'Immanent Landscape' encompassed exhibitions, residencies and symposium between Japan and Australia 2009-2012.

selected CV

SOLO EXHIBITION
2013 understanding of misunderstanding, SLOPE, Tokyo,
2010 Tsumurumitsumeru-BEHOLD, Youkobo ART SPACE, Tokyo
2009 Miru Milieu –See Site-, Sutton Gallery Project Space, Melbourne
GROUP EXHIBITION
2013 Finalist presentation for Kawaguchi City New Artists Award, Kawaguchi City Art Gallery ATLIA
2009 Peripheral, RMIT Project Space, Melbourne
2007 Polar, VCA Margaret Laurence Gallery, Melbourne
CURATORIAL PROJECT
2012 Living Everyday by Art, Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo
2010-2 Immanent Landscape, West Space, 2010 / Oyama City Kurumaya Museum, 2011 / Japan Foundation Gallery Sydney, 2012
2011 Galaxy Garden, Sutton Gallery Project Space, Melbourne
RESIDENCY
2013 (forthcoming) Arguetopia Residency program (Puebla), Mexico
2009 University of Ballarat Art Residency in association with AVOCA project, coordinated by Jill Orr and Lyndal Jones, Australia
AWARD&GRANT
2013- Australian Postgraduate Award
2013 Shortlisted for Kawaguchi City New Artists Awards (Japan)
2011 Australia-Japan Foundation’s Funding for Immanent Landscape Project
PUBLICATION
2010 Feet through: Artistic Practice between Space and Place, E-journal ‘Intersections-Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific issue.23’ Australian National University


contact

utakoshindo@gmail.com

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