HIGASHIONNA Yuichi: behind the drapes
HIGASHIONNA Yuichi
Saturday, November 25– Saturday, December 23, 2023
12:00–19:00(Wednesday – Friday), 12:00–17:00(Saturday)
By Appointment only on Tuesday
We are pleased to announce the HIGASHIONNA Yuichi’s solo exhibition at The Third Gallery Aya from November 25th to December 23rd. This is Higashionna Yuichi’s first solo show at The Third Gallery Aya, following the two-person exhibition Overlap and Action in 2019.
The artist creates paintings and art objects using everyday items, especially focusing on the subject of “fancy” interiors often found in postwar Japanese households. With its thoroughly derivative nature and origins in twisted aspirations to a European aesthetic, this kitschy decor might be described as eerie or uncanny. Among Higashionna’s best-known works is a chandelier, entangled with a large number of the circular fluorescent tubes unique to Japan, which emits excessively dazzling light and exerts an overpowering presence, exposing every detail to its all-seeing eye.
In this exhibition, his installation will incorporate a range of media and for the first time will utilize two floors of the building, the 2nd and the 4th. A conversation between the artist and the art critic Shimizu Minoru is scheduled.
Higashionna Yuichi
| Yuichi Higashionna: An introduction—in brief Unlike many of the Japanese artists who made their international debuts in the 1980s and ’90s, Yuichi Higashionna was fresh in having employed none of the stereotypical images—primarily the three Hs (Hinomaru, Hirohito, Hiroshima)—of Japanese PC, focusing instead on invisible, unnoticed aspects of Japanese society. The postwar Japanese middle class had been led to believe that items labeled with the catchy term “fancy goods,” such as the bay windows with lace curtains typical in prefabricated houses, plastic flower arrangements, and pastel-colored housewares, were imported and copied European styles, when in fact these styles and goods were neither European nor fancy, but purely Japanese insofar as they were found exclusively in Japan. “Fancy” was hence a quality of objects that cannot be regarded as copies, but only as simulacra. Thus it might also be said that “fancy goods” reflect an invisible element of Japanese reality. […] Explicitly political art is merely a simplification of real politics, which functions via a micrological, invisible network of power relationships that consistently attempts to maintain a natural and ordinary role in our everyday lives. A politically ideal situation would therefore be achieved when nobody is conscious of the network’s smooth functioning.… Essentially political art deals with naturalized, unconscious politics in its attempt to reveal things invisible. In this respect, Higashionna has been focusing on the implicit politics of Japanese society as he exposes intimate and disgusting simulacra and intervenes in their everyday functioning. […] In recent years, his interests have shifted from purely Japanese to more general contexts, going beyond the locality of Japanese simulacra to explore the full depth of the cultural functions of artistic expression, and especially of optical effects. In short, in this new stage, implicit politics are discovering a new optical art.… Seemingly natural environments are viewed as always implying a certain politics and institutionalism. Higashionna picks up a single quality (such as whiteness) and intensifies and exaggerates it to reveal its implications. He enters a white cube in order to deform it and intervene in its natural functioning. This intensification and exaggeration, intervention and deformation constitute Higashionna’s new optical art, humorously balancing uncanniness with artistic beauty. Excerpts from Minoru Shimizu’s “Fluctuations in White and Black: Yuichi Higashionna’s ‘Light Works’,” in FL gasbook 26 (2022). |
Biography
| Born in Tokyo, Japan | |
| Live and work in Tokyo |
Selected Solo Exhibition
| 2023 | awkward assemblages. CALM & PUNK GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan |
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| 2020 | Large Interior. void+, Tokyo, Japan Ota Art Archives(OAA) #2 Higashionna Yuichi. KOCA, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2019 | un-. Capsule, Tokyo, Japan un-unheimlich. void+, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2017 | blank -prints and drawings-. Nihombashi Takashimaya Department Store Gallery X, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2016 | Spill Light. Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2015 | Play double. CAPSULE, Tokyo, Japan let’s get dizzy. Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY |
| 2014 | bascule. CAPSULE/SUNDAY, Tokyo, Japan Ubiq. Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2012 | Apparition. Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Yuichi Higashionna/FL. CALM&PUNK GALLERY and NADiff GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2011 | fluorescent. Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY |
| 2010 | Exit Gallery, Hong Kong, China VENICE/TOKYO. Venice Projects, Venice, Italy Yumiko Chiba Associates viewing room shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan fluorescent/new prints&drawings. NADiff Gallery 2F, Tokyo, Japan VENEZIA/TOKYO. BERENGO AKATSU COLLECTION, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2009 | The Exhibition on the 80th Anniversary of Musashino Art University METAMORPHOSIS – Objects today Vol.4 Yuichi HIGASHIONNNA. gallery αM, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2008 | MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY PROJECT SPACE, New York, NY refract!. CALM & PUNK GALLERY, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2005 | YAMAMOTO GENDAI, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2003 | Setagaya Art Museum (corridor), Tokyo, Japan |
| 2001 | Gallery 101, Ottawa, Canada |
| 2000 | Nadiff, Tokyo, Japan |
Selected Group Exhibition
| 2023 | Plants and Lights, Dependence and Independence: Ver. 1. void+, Tokyo, Japan |
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| 2022 | Passport to Shangri-La. The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Saitama, Japan Positionalities. Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery ＠KCUA, Kyoto, Japan At World's End, Garden and Interior ーYuichi Higashionna, Dorita Takido. AL｜TRAUMARIS, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2019 | Overlap and Action (With KOUYAMA Yasuhiro). The Third Gallery Aya, Osaka, Japan |
| 2015 | GLASSTRESS 2015 GOTIKA. Berengo Studio, Venice, Italy Roppongi Art Night. National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2013 | Why not live for Art? II -9 collectors reveal their treasures. Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Junkies’ Promises: Curated by Iván Navarro. PAUL KASMIN GALLERY, New York, NY |
| 2012 | DAIKANYAMA ART STREET. Kyu Yamate-Dori Street, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2011 | THE MARGULIES COLLECTION AT THE WAREhOUSE, Miami, FL MASKED PORTRAIT PART II: When Vibrations Become Forms. Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY Glasstress 2011. Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, Venice, Italy |
| 2010 | The New Décor. Hayward Gallery, London, UK |
| 2009 | SECOND NATURE EN DANSK-JAPANSK DESIGNUDSTILLING. RUNDETAARN, Copenhagen, Denmark Incidental Affairs: Contemporary Art of Transient States. Suntory Museum, Osaka, Japan Constructivismes. Almine Rech Gallery, Brussel, Belgium |
| 2008 | Double Chronos. ZAP, Tokyo, Japan The Masked Portrait. Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY |
| 2007 | Roppongi Crossing 2007 Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art. Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan THIS PLAY!. 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Tokyo, Japan |
| 2006 | Sea Art Festival （Living Furniture). Busan Biennale 2006, Busan, Korea Enjoyable House. Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan |
| 2004 | Officina Asia. Galleria d’arte moderna, Bologna, Italy |
| 2003 | ZONE. Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan |
| 1999 | ART / DOMESTICS Temperature of the Time. Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan |
Publication
| 2012 | GAS BOOK 26 FL. Tokyo: Gas As Interface Co., Ltd. |
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| 2009 | Yuichi Higashionna Flowers. (text: Mari Nakayama） True Ring Co., Ltd. |
| 2008 | GAS BOOK 25 YUICHI HIGASHIONNA. Tokyo: Gas As Interface Co., Ltd. |