Yokohama Triennale 2014
ART Fahrenheit 451: Sailing into the sea of oblivion
August 1–November 3, 2014
Main venues:
Yokohama Museum of Art
3-4-1 Minatomirai
Nishi-ku, Yokohama 220-0012
Japan
Shinko Pier Exhibition Hall
2-5 Shinko
Naka-ku, Yokohama 220-0012
Japan
The fifth edition of Yokohama Triennale opens to the public on August 1. This edition, titled ART Fahrenheit 451: Sailing into the sea of oblivion, invites visitors to embark on a voyage into the sea of oblivion under the concept that “various things and information drift temporally into Yokohama Triennale 2014 and eventually drift away again.” During the voyage, visitors may recall things that have been inadvertently lost from their lives, things that have been perpetually forgotten by human beings, and particular things that have been lost in the contemporary age.
The exhibition, directed by the artist Morimura Yasumasa, unfolds like a book, starting with an introduction and concluding in Chapter 11, with over 400 artworks by 65 groups/79 artists installed in two venues, Yokohama Museum of Art and Shinko Pier Exhibition Hall.
At the entrance of Yokohama Museum of Art, which is the “Introduction” of the exhibition and is titled “What is in the Center of the World?,” Michael Landy’s enormous Art Bin, a container for the artists to dispose their own unwanted art, makes a symbolic appearance. Morimura places what Landy calls “a monument to creative failure” at the center of the museum building to visualize the history of artistic failures that lurks in the shadow of all artistic endeavors.
The exhibition concludes at “Chapter 11: Drifting in a Sea of Oblivion” at Shinko Pier Exhibition, where Yanagi Miwa, who has shown in the first Yokohama Triennale in 2001 and has exhibited at the Japan Pavilion in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, is back in Yokohama with a work of different context and scale. She unveils a custom-made mobile stage truck designed and manufactured in Taiwan and brought to Yokohama to be finished by the artist, working in collaboration with students of Taiwanese and Japanese art universities. The impressive design features widespread wings inspired from Wings of the Sun, a novel by Nakagami Kenji, of which she is working on a stage adaptation to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Nakagami Kenji’s birth in 2016.
Another well-established Japanese artist Ohtake Shinro also exhibits his new work Retinamnesia Filtration Shed. The artist has made many works in the form of books including scrapbooks, and sketchbooks in the past, but for Yokohama, he presents what might be called a “boat book,” which is a large-scale book-shaped installation.
Other participating artists include Vija Celmins, Eric Baudelaire, Simon Starling, Fukuoka Michio, and Matsuzawa Yutaka. The exhibition also includes “the only book in the world,” a specially bound handmade book created as an homage to Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 as well as a collection of books of World War II-era literature by writers, who sang the praises of war, and other items that are not necessarily contemporary art works but relate to “things that may have been forgotten.”
At the conclusion of the exhibition, visitors will finally see the sea of Yokohama widely open in front of them. They can wonder, feel perplexed, become inspired, broaden their imagination and stop and contemplate, and think about what they had been left in the “sea of oblivion.”
Yokohama Triennale 2014 also collaborates with local NPOs and alternative spaces to broaden its context to present a wide range of creative endeavors to the visitors. Exhibitions, residency programs, symposiums and other special programs take place at five locations that are designated as “Creative City Area Bases” to coincide with the Triennale.
For list of artists, click here.
For further information of Yokohama Triennale 2014, click here.
For press inquiries: yt2014 [at] ypcpr.com
For general inquiries: press [at] yokohamatriennale.jp
