Michele Kong & Yosuke Ito "Circulation"
M55 Art
This event has ended.
With upheaval spreading around the world, what can we make of our current global situation? Like looking in a mirror every morning, we may check numerous sources of information. On one hand, in Japan we witnessed that everybody could experience weakness, loss and suffering from unexpected circumstances – the great earthquake and tsunami. More recently we saw the Occupy protests spreading from Wall Street to locations all over the world. They seem to cry out for recovering some common ground, both material and spiritual.
These incidents show images in a mirror that is not always stable and flat. Fact was not reflected in the mirror, more perhaps somewhere between the incidents and the reflections. If the mirror that we look into each morning does not reflect fact, then is the mirror even real? Now, everything is in interconnected, circulating on a global scale and has the possibility to be upset.
Art has a function to rouse people to look at the structures of the current world and show something in between. This two-person show creates a dialogue and exchange of ideas between artists Michele Kong (NY) and Yosuke Ito (Tokyo).
This light-based exhibition is best viewed after sunset.
Michele Kong
For several years, Michele Kong created large-scale sculptural installations inspired by structures in nature and focusing attention on things found in plain sight. Such works have been included in exhibitions at a variety of art venues including: PS 1 Contemporary Art Center (NY), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (NE), Arlington Arts Center (VA), Maryland Art Place (MD), Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (DE), to name just a few. In 2009, Kong expanded her artistic practice and began experimenting with narrative in short video projects. Several fellowships including the Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and other programs supported this new body of work. Additionally a 2009 Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, awarded by the Japan-US Friendship Commission/NEA, contributed to the production of collaborative works including the work on view in this exhibition, The Space Between.
Yosuke Ito
A Tokyo-based artist and international exhibitor, is interested in the mechanism of self-reflection. He refers to this process as a connection between gaze and glance to memory and record. As Artistic Director of the international exchange project, Puddles, Ito has collaborated with intermedia artist Phill Niblock, a Minimal sound master. The inspiration from these collaborations has broadened Ito’s work, reaching beyond the visual to include other senses. From 2009 at M55 Art, Ito develops his ideas into a visual narrative. The dispersal of light is transferred to the circular motion of propellers powered by solar cells, suggesting the far-reaching implications regarding current global environmental issues.
Media
Schedule
from January 27, 2012 to February 11, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-02-02 from 18:00 to 20:00