Beijing

SHIMURAbros

2018/5/15–6/30

● Opening Reception 

Tuesday, May 15, 2018 16:00-18:00

at Tokyo Gallery+BTAP | Beijing

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP will host SHIMURAbros’ first solo exhibition in Beijing on May 15 (Tuesday). Artist duo SHIMURAbros is made up of Yuka (graduated from University of the Arts London: Central St Martins) and Kentaro (who majored in Imaging Art at Tokyo Polytechnic University). Owing their fame to making sculptures that consist of various composite elements, three-dimensional installations and avant-garde films, the duo is committed to pursuing a new video-based expression. After receiving an Excellence Award in the Art Division of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival, their works were successively screened in Festival de Cannes and the Berlinale Festival, and they participated in exhibitions held at global institutions such as the National Arts Center in Tokyo, the National University of Singapore’s Centre for the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (Australia) and the Vienna’s Museums Quartier. After receiving a support grant for overseas research from the Pola Art Foundation in early 2014, the artists expanded their studio practice to both Japan and Germany. Meanwhile, they’re the sole Asia-based artists to have served as research associates to the studio of Olafur Eliasson. In a conversation with Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, Curator of the Singapore Pavilion at 56th Venice Biennale 2015, the artists stated: “Film is the catalyst for our creations. The nature of the representation of film is the mutual exchange of light and matter.” Film lies at the foundation of all of SHIMURAbros’ creations: breaking through traditions while homing in on its essence, they use an extensive range of materials, mixed media and approaches to materialize the virtual medium of film, thus spawning their veritable invention of a kind of “new video installation” works. This exhibition introduces the second part of the work series TRACE SKY, entitled TRACE-SKY-Floating Cloud. Initial inspiration for the TRACE series, which the artists first put out in 2015, came from Yasujirō Ozu’s film Tokyo Story, whereas the backdrop for this new work is the film Floating Clouds (1955) by Mikio Naruse, a representative piece of 1950s Japanese cinema which Ozu stated outright he couldn’t have filmed himself. In the work, the artists use Google Street View to re-locate and capture the “sky” (kong) proper to post-war Japanese films, affording us a view of the junctures between images that are automatically generated using 360-degree panoramic photography. They then use mixed media as well as distinctive optical techniques to visualize the phenomena at play in this mechanical world. Initially, the audience may have a hard time forming their judgment at a glance, but by viewing the work from alternating angles they’ll be able to capture and discern aerial scenes formed by the slapdash intersection of electrical wires. Unlike the work Tokyo Story, in Floating Cloud the artists take on the challenge of a more monumental three-dimensional installation achieved through even more complex wire cutting and optical shifts and transformations, which help usher the audience into a dually illusory world. Also showcased is the large-scale installation SUN, which aims to capture solar dynamics; a painting of the same name which presents traditional Japanese painterly forms using data pertaining to ultrasonic waves. The exhibition will also feature the Beijing debut of an interactive folding screen installation, in which virtual and real images are assembled into a single organic whole, along with video works created by the artists during their residency at the National University of Singapore’s Centre for the Arts.

For the audience, video works are made up of countless scenes captured by camera lenses, whereas for the artists, video also entails all that’s behind the camera: equipment, techniques, conceptions and approaches pervading the production process. SHIMURAbros make use of highly common materials taken from daily life to narrate the stories that pervade films using their own distinctive creative methods, thereby revealing a new potential of filmmaking. Despite being comprised of the most cutting edge, multimedia creative techniques, their works show no lack of the tenderhearted sensibilities that so typify the medium of film.

WORKS

Title
TRACE – SKY - Floating Clouds 01 (Edition Size 2)
Year
2018
Size
150 x 150 x 23 cm
Material
Mirror, optical glass, electrical wire, wood, steel
お問合わせ
Title
TRACE – SKY - Floating Clouds 08 (Edition Size 2)
Year
2018
Size
84 x 84 x 17 cm
Material
Mirror, optical glass, electrical wire, wood
Title
TRACE – SKY - Floating Clouds 10 (Edition Size 2)
Year
2018
Size
48 x 48 x 15 cm
Material Material
Mirror, optical glass, electrical wire, wood
Title
TRACE – SKY - Floating Clouds 11 (Edition Size 2)
Year
2018
Size
48 x 48 x 15 cm
Material
Mirror, optical glass, electrical wire, wood
お問合わせ
Title
TRACE – SKY - Floating Clouds 12 (Edition Size 2)
Year
2018
Size
48 x 48 x 15 cm
Material
Mirror, optical glass, electrical wire, wood
お問合わせ
Title
Half Moon, Daylight, Clouds
Year
2018
Size
72.4 x 144.4 x h164.2 cm
Material
Brass, optical glass, iron
お問合わせ
Title
SUN 8.8.2017
Year
2018
Size
73 x 50 x 3 cm
Material
Japanese pigment on paper
お問合わせ
Title
SUN 12.12.2017
Year
2018
Size
73 x 50 x 3 cm
Material
Japanese pigment on paper
お問合わせ

SHIMURAbros is a sister-brother duo comprising Yuka Shimura, who was born in 1976 and holds a bachelor’s degree from Tama Art University and a master’s degree from University of the Arts London: Central St Martins, and her brother Kentaro, who was born in 1979 and holds a degree in Imaging Art from Tokyo Polytechnic University. After receiving an Excellence Award in the Art Division of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival, hosted by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, the pair went onto have their works shown at Festival de Cannes and the Berlinale Festival and exhibited by art galleries in Japan and overseas. In recent years the works of SHIMURAbros have been exhibited at the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, and the duo has taken part in the residence program at the National University of Singapore’s Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA). In 2017, ArtReview Asia magazine named SHIMURAbros as a “future great”. SHIMURAbros relocated to Berlin in 2014 on a research grant from the Pola Art Foundation, where they are currently resident as researchers at the studio of Olafur Eliasson. Recently, the duo was chosen to create the thirtieth commission work for the Aichi Arts Center and the Aichi Prefectural Art Museum, which resulted in Butterfly Upon a Wheel (2022), a series of video works that considers the ongoing issue of refugees, starting with Sugihara Chiune, the diplomat who famously issued ‘visas for life’ during WWII.

Learn More