“Bystanders”
“Bystanders”
Artist: Risako KOKUBU, Shunsuke SAIKI, Aoi TOKUNAGA
Planning: Risako KOKUBU, CASHI / Organizers: CASHI, Shinjuku Ophthalmologist (GANKA) Gallery / Cooperation: myheirloom
CASHI is pleased to announce a new exhibition “Bystanders” featuring Risako Kokubu, Shunsuke Saiki, and Aoi Tokunaga. This exhibition will be on view at the gallery starting on February 24th (Fri) and continuing through March 25th (Sat).
We are currently living in an era of large-scale disasters and sociopolitical issues such as the Great East Japan Earthquake, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russian aggression in Ukraine. We must continue to consume large amounts of information and content provided on a daily basis through electronic display screens. The three artists featured in this exhibition accept these everyday tasks of modern society while attempting to capture them from their unique third-party perspective.
Kokubu treats nostalgic everyday scenes and images of subcultural content with which she has been familiar since childhood, cropping and distorting them into abstract forms and painting them with vivid colors. Their superficial beauty seems to emphasize the superficiality of the affluence that modern society pursues and the nihilism lying there. Saiki deconstructs and reconstructs the images and symbols that abound in the real world and on the internet, cynically presenting a contemporary sense of everyday life that is a fusion of reality and the internet. His paintings suggest several social issues that we are forced to consume through electronic display screens while also seeming to pose the question of how we can empathize with and be close to others who are on the other side of a screen. Meanwhile, Tokunaga creates manga-like pictorial surfaces by inserting flattened characters into landscapes derived from his own childhood memories. The characters depicted with the vague memories of the landscapes are somewhat escapist and evoke a sense of detachment (a loss of subjectivity from one’s own body, emotions, thoughts, and senses with an unrealistic sense of one’s own existence).
This exhibition will be held concurrently at the Shinjuku Ophthalmologist (GANKA) Gallery (please note that the gallery has various opening hours and closing days). We look forward to welcoming you to the cities and introducing you to this new exhibition.
[CASHI]
Fri. February 24th–Sat. March 25th, 2023
Venue: CASHI 5-6-12-1F Asakusabashi Taito-ku Tokyo 111-0053, Japan
Open: Wed.–Sat. 11:00–18:00
http://cashi.jp
[Shinjuku Ophthalmologist (GANKA) Gallery]
Fri. February 24th–Wed. March 15th, 2023
Venue: Shinjuku Ophthalmologist (GANKA) Gallery Space M 5-18-11 Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0022, Japan
Open: 12:00–20:00 *12:00–17:00 on Wed. *Closed on Thu.
https://www.gankagarou.com/
Press Release(en)
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Requests to visitors:
• Please refrain from visiting the gallery if you have a fever or cold symptoms.
• Please wear a mask and disinfect your hands with alcohol.
• Admission may be restricted if a large number of visitors come at once.
• Please keep a social distance from other visitors in the gallery.
• Please do not touch the art works.