3 29

Open

EXHIBITION

Aperto 18 GU Kenryou Intervals of the afterimage

2023.4.8 (Sat.) -
2023.9.18 (Mon.)

Information

Period :
2023.4.8 (Sat.) - 2023.9.18 (Mon.)
10:00-18:00(until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
Venue :
Long-Term Project Room / 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Closed:
Mondays (except July 17, September 18), May 14, July 18
Admission:
Free
For More Information:
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Phone: +81-76-220-2800
E-Mail: info@kanazawa21.jp

About the Exhibition

GU Kenryou employs an original technique known as “digital weaving,” in which multiple photographs are woven together at a pixel level to create photographic works with a textural quality resembling fabric, expressing the latent context underlying the images. This exhibition will feature a new series of large-scale photographs taken with a high-resolution camera in forests around the world, including the primeval forests of Fujian Province in China. As a result of their size, the images as a whole are not compressed or reduced to the framework of “flatness,” but rather trigger active movement of the viewer’s eye, evoking the sense of awe experienced and the ghostly murmurs heard in the shadows of a forest. Meanwhile, the artist’s distinctive method of weaving multiple images together manually in repeating rows and columns of pixels, one by one, generates fluctuations on an unconscious level that transcend the artist’s intentions, confining the natural spatial and temporal scale of the earth within the works in a complex fashion. Gu’s art stimulates our common planetary memory, and by imprinting the multi-temporal, multi-lingual, and multi-locational nature of the forest on our minds like an afterimage, brings about changes in the sensibilities of the contemporary viewer paralyzed by an accelerating deluge of visual information.

Related Events

Artist’s Talk
Date: April 8 (Sat), 2023 14:00-16:00
Venue: Lecture Hall, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Speakers: GU Kenryou, YAMAMOTO Hiroki (Lecturer, Kanazawa College of Art)
Moderator: KUROSAWA Seiha (Assistant Curator, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa)
Capacity: 90 people
Admission: Free

Artist’s Profile

Photo: Yosuke Kamiyama

GU Kenryou

GU Kenryou was born in Kyoto and raised in Shanghai, and now lives and works in Kyoto. He earned his BFA in Photography at Kyoto University of the Arts (formerly Kyoto University of Art and Design), studying abroad
at the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles, France. Gu’s work captures at once the sensations of the body moving through space as well as the accumulation of sights and scenes, then uses photography as a device through which to transform and reconfigure this information in wide-ranging ways. Solo exhibitions include A Part of There is Here (Yukiko Mizutani Gallery, Tokyo), 15972 Sampling (SFERA, Kyoto, Kyotographie 2019), Utopia (Gallery Water, Tokyo, Tokyographie 2018), 霧 霾 |Wu-Mai (Wacoal Study Hall Kyoto Gallery, Kyoto), Utopia (Former Junpu Elementary School, Kyoto). Awards include Grand Prix, KG+ Award (2018) and Grand Prix, sanwacompany Art Award / Art in the House (2019).

About the “Aperto” Series

The exhibition series “Aperto” introduces up-and-coming young artists in a solo exhibition format. As an art museum actively engaged with the contemporary world, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa looks closely at new trends now in the process of forming. Artists and curators collaborate in creating occasions for exhibiting works and act as an intermediary between today’s creation and that of the future. This exhibition series looks at individual artists who possess sufficient creative motivation to command a solo exhibition and who are expected to make a significant impact in the future. Artists are selected without regard for their nationality or expressive media by the curator at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Note: “Aperto” is Italian for “open.”

Images

    GU Kenryou, Mori, Shades_dw_001, 2023
    © Kenryou Gu
    courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates

    GU Kenryou,Mori, Shades_dw_001 (detail), 2023
    © Kenryou Gu
    courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates

    GU Kenryou,Mori, Shades_dw_001 (detail), 2023
    © Kenryou Gu
    courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates

Organizers

Organized by:
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Kanazawa Art Promotion and Development Foundation)