IKU
ART SG
2023.1.12-1.15
Participated in the Singapore art fair ART SG, presenting video and painting works incorporating urban landscapes. Iconic scenes such as the Supertrees of Gardens by the Bay were integrated into a computer-constructed virtual world, from which images were extracted and shown. The white-cube space of the art fair itself was also reconstructed within the virtual world, establishing a nested spatial structure. In addition, a Window series was produced, incorporating patterns and styles derived from Singapore’s multicultural history. The works attempt to create a perceptual experience in which urban memory and virtual landscape overlap.
Bunpei Kado and Iku Harada will participate in ART SG, Asia's largest art fair
After a long wait, ART SG will finally open as Singapore's art fair in January 2023, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Art Front Gallery has participated in Art Stage Singapore since 2013, introducing the gallery's artists to Asian customers. Since Taipei Dangdai, we have built a relationship with ART SG director Magnus Renfrew through fairs and online events, and are looking to make a new impact on ART SG. ART SG, which will be held from January next year, will feature over 150 galleries, making it the largest art fair in the Asia-Pacific region in the past decade. Held at Singapore's iconic Marina Bay Sands and Convention Centre, it will be a fitting event to kick off 2023, attracting collectors from neighboring countries.
Iku Harada
Harada Iku creates 3D virtual spaces on a computer, and develops works that are nested within the real world. The trigger for creating his own style was that he believed that everything in everyday life had been depicted throughout history, and he considered creating something that met three criteria: something that no one had depicted before, something that would continue into the future, and something that he could develop himself. As a result, he came up with the idea of creating his own world using computer graphics, which he calls an "inner world." In the early days of his style, he simply painted this 3D worldview, which had simple forms, onto a canvas, and made the virtual space into a realistic, physical space, but
Over the past 20 years, the artist has experimented with countless techniques, developing painting motifs with forms that are unlike any other in the world. Furthermore, she has not only materialized virtual reality spaces, but also reflected real-world spatial motifs in virtual spaces, creating works that transport viewers back and forth between the two worlds. She is perhaps a unique pioneer among artists who use PC images as motifs, and is highly regarded by Japan's leading digital artists today.
Singapore is a city where various cultures, including Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Arabic, mix together, and each area is divided, making it a fun city to stroll around. Geometric patterns, symbolic of Peranakan and Islamic cultures, are everywhere, inviting the eye to the landscape that unfolds in the distance. This latest work also takes into consideration interactions with local people.
Bunpei Kado
Since participating in Art Stage Singapore in 2013, Kado has been a fixture at various international fairs, and is returning to Singapore. This exhibition will reexamine one of his long-standing themes, nature in the city and artificial nature. Singapore has always been primarily urban, and as evidenced by the government's initiative in planning botanical gardens, the question of how to preserve nature and how to reconcile it with development has long been a challenge. Kado Bunpei lightly addresses these, so to speak, heavy social issues through his work.
Toy tree kits also pose a whole new level of problems when the scale increases.
This work, created in 2016, conveys the message that we literally breathe oxygen that is produced by trees, and that our lives would not be possible without the natural cycle. It seems to have predicted the current era in which oxygen masks and other items have become even more popular due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Other works planned for exhibition include "Detached Condominium," which is themed around residential living. According to French art critic Clelia Chernick, Corner's art is "light."
Kado Bunpei's world is "suspenseful" in two senses. His world is "suspended" in the sense that it is free from gravity and rises from the ground, transcending any serious meaning. Interestingly, the more one thinks about gravity, the more its delicate and unstable nature becomes apparent. The world is suspenseful, dangerous, and full of threats, and not only is its balance precarious, but the time for its downfall is looming.
His collage technique, combining objects with other objects, treats the world like poetry while simultaneously questioning it—or even mystifying it—giving it a critical and political quality. Let us recall the Surrealists' ambition to "transform the world." Their "transformation of life" inextricably linked poetic and political revolutions, but never intended to confuse the two. While advocating the dialectic between aesthetics and politics, Kado's collage-like inlay technique and "anomalies" offer a new way of looking at the world. Just as a microscope reveals minute substances that are impossible to track with the naked eye, and a telescope reveals things that are far away but invisible, Kado Bunpei's blending of lightness and gravity, humor and seriousness, illuminates the invisible contradictions and absurdities of modern society.
Please take a look at the works of Harada and Kaku, which depart from the everyday and soar into the distance.
ART SG
Art Front Gallery Booth: FC12
Exhibiting artists: Kado Bunpei and Harada Iku
Venue: Marina Bay Sands + Convention Centre
URL: https://artsg.com/