YOKOHAMA 2008: International Triennale of Contemporary Art
Time Crevasse
September 13-November 30, 2008
Artistic Director: Tsutomu Mizusawa
www.yokohamatriennale.jp
As we entered a new millennium in the year 2001, the Yokohama Triennale, an international triennial of contemporary art, was established as a forum for new cultural production. The first Yokohama Triennale, YOKOHAMA 2001: Mega WaveTowards a New Synthesis, was curated by Shinji Kohmoto, Nobuo Nakamura, Fumio Nanjo, and Akira Tatehata, and a total of 109 artists from 38 nations around the globe participated. Following the success of the first Triennale, visual artist Tadashi Kawamata realized the 2nd Yokohama Triennale in 2005, by adopting the unique concept of Work in Progress under the title of Art Circus (Jumping from the Ordinary).
YOKOHAMA 2008, Yokohamas third international triennale of contemporary art, will take place in the autumn of 2008. The organizing committee for the 3rd Yokohama Triennale is pleased to announce that Tsutomu Mizusawa, Chief Curator of the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama, has been appointed as the Artistic Director. Through this major art exhibition set in the cosmopolitan port city of Yokohama, Mizusawa aims to reaffirm the boundless energy that art affords us. Together with the international curatorial team, Mizusawa will organize the exhibition under the overall theme Time Crevasse.
Time Crevasse
Art shakes up our everyday perceptions. It gives us glimpses of theabysses we normally fail to notice, or perhaps pretend not to notice. It can horrify us, give us courage, console us, or provide us with what we need to face life. Art arises when we confront those abysses squarely and, by waiting attentively at the edges of time crevasses, we can scrupulously register various forms of mutual differentiationindividual or social differences; differences of nationality, gender, generation, ethnicity, religion, and so onincluding the particular circumstances in which we ourselves are currently situated.
As the Yokohama Triennale prepares to unfold for the third time, it will offer an opportunity for honest reevaluation and reaffirmation of arts essential value and power today and in the future. This forum for artistic expression will be maintained not only for the sake of mere novelty to be consumed like information, but rather so that, by confronting and accepting the myriad crevasses etched in their histories, people can work toward achieving a better mutual understanding of a deep and far-reaching kind.
Outline of the Exhibition
Period
September 13November 30, 2008
Venues
Central and Waterfront Sites in Yokohama
Organizers
The Japan Foundation, The City of Yokohama, NHK, The Asahi Shimbun, The Organizing Committee for the Yokohama Triennale, et al.
Artistic Director
Tsutomu Mizusawa (Chief Curator, Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama)
Artistic Director
Tsutomu Mizusawa
Born in Yokohama in 1952. Obtained an MA from Keio University (Japan) and joined the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, as curator in 1978. Curated many exhibitions, including MOBO, MOGA / Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Japanese Modern Art 191035 (1998), Isamu Wakabayashi(1997), Antony Gormley: Still Moving(1996), and Katsura Funakoshi(1993). He was appointed the Japanese commissioner of the Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh in 1993 and 1997, and of the São Paulo Biennale in 2004.
* For more information go to: www.yokohamatriennale.jp/
