April 27–June 1, 2014
Performance: Friday, April 25
Opening: Sunday, April 27, 4–6pm, moderated discussion at 4:30pm
testsite
502 W. 33rd Street
Austin, TX 78705
Hours: Sundays 4–6pm
and by appointment
www.fluentcollab.org/testsite
www.fuseboxfestival.com
Performance (off-site): Friday, April 25, 6pm, Blanton Museum of Art Auditorium (in the Smith building), University of Texas, 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Austin, Texas 78701. Free tickets at the door. Parking in the garage at MLK and Brazos.
Austin’s Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present an installation of video work by Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi. Curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, this will be Mr. Koizumi’s first exhibition in the state of Texas and third solo exhibition in the United States. In conjunction with the installation at testsite, Mr. Koizumi will perform his work Autopsychobabble #5 at the Blanton Museum of Art auditorium on April 25 as part of the 10th Annual Fusebox Festival. The Fusebox Festival performance is co-organized by testsite and the Blanton Museum of Art.
The presentation at testsite will feature video works from the past decade, including Human Opera XXX (2007), Portrait of a Young Samurai (2009), and Inder Kommen Sie/It’s a Comedy (2012). The artist and curator will engage in a moderated discussion during the opening event at testsite on Sunday, April 27.
In his video installations and performances, Meiro Koizumi deals with psychological and political dynamics on a scale from the familial to the national, and examines questions of affect, perception, and memory, often touching upon aspects of Japan’s modern history. Implicating himself and his performers in his art, Koizumi challenges the viewer by re-defining the uncomfortable and indefinable line between cruelty and comedy through his choreographed emotional manipulations.
About the artist
Meiro Koizumi is a video and performance artist working in Yokohama, Japan (born in Gunma, Japan, 1976). He studied at the International Christian University, Tokyo (1996–1999); Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1999–2002) and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2005–2006), and won first prize at Beck’s Futures 2 in London for student film and video (2001). His solo exhibitions and performances have been featured at MoMA, New York (2013); Tate Modern, London (2013); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2012); Art Space, Sydney (2011); and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2009). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev (2012); Art Scope 2009–2011: Invisible Memories at the Hara Museum, Tokyo (2011); Liverpool Biennial (2010); Media City Seoul (2010); Aichi Triennale, Japan (2010); and Nanjing Triennial, China (2008). For more information, please see the artist’s website: www.meirokoizumi.com.
About the curator
Yasufumi Nakamori, PhD, is an associate curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and teaches modern and contemporary Japanese art and architecture at Hunter College, the City University of New York. As an expert on the interdisciplinary field of the photography and architecture of twentieth-century Japan, he has recently authored scholarly essays, including “Criticism of Expo ’70 in Print: Journals Ken, Dezain Hihyō, and Bijutsu Techō” in Josai University Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 23, 2012 (a special issue on Expo ’70 and Japanese Art), and “Kawazoe Noboru – Shinkenchiku and Tradition Debate” in Metabolism: the City of Future (Mori Art Museum, 2011). In 2011, Nakamori won an Alfred H. Barr, Jr. award from the College Art Association for his book Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture, Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro (2010).
About Fluent~Collaborative and testsite
Fluent~Collaborative is a speculative, non-profit art initiative established to increase awareness of new developments in the contemporary visual arts. Fluent~Collaborative produces testsite, an experimental exhibition space. Situating itself between an exhibition space, an open studio, a temporary residency program and a private home, testsite explores new ideas in contemporary art through the initiation of collaborations. Founded by Laurence Miller and Regine Basha, Fluent~Collaborative and its venue testsite began inviting writers and curators to develop collaborative projects with artists in 2003. In the early years, testsite drew many of its writers and curators from Austin and San Antonio. These participants in turn selected artists from near and far. In the years since, testsite has continued to develop experimental projects with local, national and international artists, writers, and curators.
Support: This project is supported in part by the Japan Foundation New York Grants for Arts and Culture. Special thanks to the Blanton Museum of Art and the Fusebox Festival for their generous collaboration with the performance.