Gallery Koyanagi is pleased to present “Object Lessons,” a two-person exhibition by Yuta Nakamura and Ebosi Yuasa from January 28 to March 31, 2023.
Yuta Nakamura was born in Tokyo in 1983 and currently lives and works in Kyoto. He is interested in modern Japanese craft culture, and conducts academic research of ceramics and tiles from the perspective of ‘craft associated with the folk and architectural,’ and produces artworks deriving from this knowledge. Nakamura’s exquisite installations consists of combination of primary source materials such as ceramic shards, old books, and postcards collected through meticulous research, and objects created by Nakamura’s own hands to reflect the reinterpreted historical facts and the state of culture as seen through his own unique eyes.
Ebosi Yuasa was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1983. Influenced by Surrealism, which he learned about through the writings of a Surrealist Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928–1987), Yuasa mimics himself as “Yebosi Yuasa (1924–62),” a fictional painter born in the Taisho era (1912–26), and creates works that celebrate the atmosphere of the paintings of the past surrealistic creators such as Ichiro Fukuzawa and Kikuji Yamashita. The paintings thus created are applied to the fictional Yebosi Yuasa’s painting career, disguising the artist’s life as it might have existed at the time.
Nakamura and Yuasa have seemingly contrasting styles, but both are interested in the culture and customs of the Taisho, prewar, and postwar periods. The two artists, who are the same age, hit it off and began to visit antique bookstores and antique markets in search of a theme for their exhibition. At one antiquarian bookstore, they came across a reprint of “Tanki-manroku (records of salons to show obsessive curiosities, published in 1824-25)”, which Nakamura had been looking for. In the late Edo period (c.1790–1850), Bakin Kyokutei and other enthusiasts of the time brought curious old books, paintings, and other antiquities to the “Tanki-kai (salons to show obsessive curiosities)” to discuss and comment on them. Being intrigued by the “Tanki-manroku” that illustrated the “Tanki-kai”, Nakamura and Yuasa began to examine what “Tanki-narumono (something that is obsessively curious)” could be for each of them.
In this exhibition, Yuta Nakamura and Ebosi Yuasa will showcase their own personal impressions of the “Tanki-narumono,” the obsessive curiosities. Please enjoy Nakamura’s and Yuasa’s experiment of “Object Lessons,” a light-hearted play on the theme of history.
Gallery Koyanagi
Japan, 〒104-0061 Tokyo, Chuo City, Ginza, 1 Chome−１−7-5 銀座小柳ビル 9F