KOSAKU KANECHIKA is pleased to announce its opening in March 2017 with the solo exhibition “CAMELLIA FIELDS” by Noritaka Tatehana.

 

KOSAKU KANECHIKA will open in TERRADA Art Complex. Situated between Shinagawa and Tennozu Isle, an easily accessible area both for Haneda airport and bullet trains, TERRADA Art Complex houses 6 contemporary galleries and a studio space for artists, representing a new center for art and culture.

 

The gallery opens with a solo exhibition of Noritaka Tatehana.
Noritaka Tatehana first came into the limelight after his now representative graduation project “Heel-less Shoes” caught the attention of Lady Gaga, leading him to become an exclusive shoemaker for her. His wide range of practices embodies the artist himself changing in relation to time. In recent years he has been presenting extensively in the field of visual art, and is holding a large-scale solo exhibition Aesthetic of Magic at Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum from November 2016 to March 2017. In this exhibition Tatehana challenges himself to create the original world of his work, space and experience, while confronting the overwhelming presence of the artist Taro Okamoto, and presents his new development as an artist.
This exhibition features Tatehana’s new work “Camellia Fields”, an installation of hand-painted brass cast camellia flowers spreading out in a 3-meter circle. Its theme is life and death, following on from works such as his self-portrait sculpture gazing at his own death, entitled “Traces of a Continuing History” that he started creating after experiencing the earthquake on March 11, 2011; and a bunraku (classical doll puppetry) performance “The Love Suicides on the Bridge” at the Cartier Foundation in Paris in March 2016, which focused upon a double suicide in relation to thoughts of the Buddhist afterlife. For “Camellia Fields” Tatehana takes inspirations from the scenery of Kamakura where he grew up, and associates it with his current creation. This exhibition also features his main representative series “Heel-less Shoes” as well as the “Hairpin” and “Floating World” series, to offer a full presentation of Tatehana’s artistic practice.

 

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About This Exhibition

Tatehana remarks on his new work “CAMELLIA FIELDS” as follows:

 

The garden in the Kakuonji-Temple when I visited it after the rain was filled with wet moss. There was a large camellia tree, and at its foot, flowers that had been fallen by the rain made a red circle around it. Camellia petals do not fall apart and they fall as whole flowers, differing from usual falling petals. This was appreciated as being brave by samurai, and they planted camellia trees in their homes and temples. Yoshitoki Hojo spent his own money to build the Okura-Yakushido, the former Kakuonji-temple, which continues to exist to this day.

 

Situated at the core of Tatehana’s practice is a process of looking at the past, at Japanese art history, and history itself: a history which has continued unbroken from the memories of his time spent in Kamakura, to those of the giant camellia tree, and beyond. He extracts both aesthetics and a view on life and death from this scenery emerging from the point where personal past and larger history overlap, and transforms this into his work.

 

Tatehana’s gaze is also always aimed at the contemporary. His major work “Heel-less Shoes” takes inspirations from courtesans’ Takageta (tall wooden clogs) and was created by combining the culture cultivated in the soil of Japanese tradition, and that of westernized Japanese culture. It has gained worldwide success within contemporary Japanese fashion. His work may look eccentric, yet it is in fact the latest point within the continuous lineage of Japanese tradition, and has been acclaimed globally as something to be preserved for the future.

 

Tatehana’s work not only represents concepts, but exists on its own as if it were uniquely imbued with life by the craftsmanship of handwork. All of the “Floating World” series, with motifs of courtesans’ high wooden clogs hand-painted with Yuzen dye; the “Embossed Paintings”, acrylic paintings covered with silver as if the entire work were made from mirrors; and the “Hairpin” series, a monumental 160cm work that abandons its own usability: all of these maintain their materials’ freshness and exist with a strong sense of presence. Tatehana’s explorations continue to lead him to new thoughts upon objects.

 

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General information

Exhibition
Noritaka Tatehana "CAMELLIA FIELDS"

Dates
March 11 - April 28, 2017

Hours
11 am - 6 pm / Tue, Wed, Thu and Saturday
11 am - 8 pm / Friday
Closed on Sun, Mon and National Holidays

Location
KOSAKU KANECHIKA
TERRADA Art Complex 5F
1-33-10 Higashi-Shinagawa
Shinagawa-ku
Tokyo
140-0002
+81(0)3-6712-3346
kosakukanechika.com

Free Admission

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Noritaka Tatehana

Born in 1985 in Tokyo. His family ran a public bathhouse “Kabuki-yu” in Kabukicho, Tokyo, and he grew up in Kamakura. He learnt to create with own hands when he was small under the influence of his mother, who was a doll artist practicing in the Waldorf education method. He graduated from the Department of Crafts, Textile Arts, at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2010. He has presented work at Image-Makers (21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, 2010), Future Beauty (the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, touring internationally, 2012), and a solo exhibition Aesthetic of Magic (The Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Japan, 2016) amongst others. He also presents a wide variety of creative practice, one notable example being a bunraku performance at the Cartier Foundation in Paris in March 2016. His work is included in the collections of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum.