“Rebirth: Recent Work by Mariko Mori” Exhibition
Japan Society Gallery
This event has ended.
Japan Society Gallery unveils an ambitious solo exhibition of works produced by the internationally acclaimed artist Mariko Mori over the course of the last decade, including an important light installation never before exhibited in the U.S. and a new video work.
Rebirth: Recent Work by Mariko Mori paints a picture of an artist who has chosen to explore different themes, aesthetics, and technology since her last museum show in New York over ten years ago, when she was described by The New York Times as a “jaundiced but intensely engaged Warholian eye on the floating world of consumer culture.”
In collaboration with curator Miwako Tezuka, director of Japan Society Gallery, Mariko Mori has designed the upcoming exhibition to invite us to a journey through immersive environments, which reflects prehistoric view on the birth of the life force; the present-day rupture of humankind from nature; and the potential for the reemergence of creative energy. Initially conceived for the space at the Society, Rebirth first opened at the Royal Academy of Art in London last year, and now it travels to Japan Society Gallery in its full configuration as the curator and the artist have originally envisioned. Japan Society is the only North American stop of this transformative exhibition.
“Rebirth reflects Mori’s shift away from a preoccupation with Japanese pop culture and consumerism toward the creation of contemplative and participatory spaces, and a vision of art and technology as essential parts of the broader ecology,” says Tezuka.
Nearly 35 installations, sculptures, photographs, drawings, and videos are featured, many informed by Mori’s extensive explorations of ancient cultures, including the Jōmon (14,000–300 BCE) of Japan and the Celts in Europe. “Our life was inherited from our very remote ancestors and given to us now and we will transfer it to future generations…. The chain of life reaching back through history, and our ancestors’ reverence for the natural world, remind us how interwoven we are with our environment,” says Mori.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Japan Society is collaborating with Christine Vendredi-Auzanneau, Director, Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, on a special week-long outdoor screening of Mariko Mori’s new video work produced for her solo presentation this fall at Espace. The video screening, which will take place during the opening week of Rebirth (October 7–13, 2013) and will be projected onto the façade of Japan Society’s East 47th Street headquarters from sundown to 9:00pm, will create a link between her dual roots in Tokyo and New York.
Upon entering Japan Society the visitor will encounter two works suspended above the Japanese pond and bamboo garden in the landmarked lobby: Ring (2012), a beautiful, seemingly iridescent halo; and Birds I (2013), an enigmatic, pearlescent, swirl-shaped sculpture. Ring at the Society gives a good idea of a larger version of Ring that will be installed permanently above a waterfall in Resende, Brazil in the future.
As one of many related programs during the exhibition period, Mariko Mori will perform her ritualistic piece at Japan Society called Oneness that offers a moment of quietude through gentle choreography. Mori turns into a shaman of sorts and guides us into a meditative state of mind and invites us to create a symbolic connection with all attendants.
Mariko Mori is an internationally acclaimed artist, whose work has been acquired by museums
and private collectors worldwide.
In 2011, a major survey of her work, entitled Oneness, became the world’s most visited contemporary art exhibition in its venue at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro (538,328 visitors), after having been seen at the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark; and the Pinchuk Arts Center, Kiev, Ukraine.
Mori’s solo exhibitions have been organized in institutions around the world, including the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Prada Foundation, Milan; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Serpentine Gallery, London; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Mori’s work was featured in the Royal Academy’s group exhibition Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art in 2000.
Mori has received numerous international awards, including the prestigious Menzioni d’Onore (Honorary Mentions) at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 (for the work Nirvana) and the 8th Annual Award as a Promising Artist and Scholar in the Field of Contemporary Japanese Art in 2001 from the Japan Cultural Arts Foundation. Mariko Mori currently lives and works in New York, London, and Tokyo.
[Image: Mariko Mori (b. 1967) “Transcircle 1.1” 2004. Stone, Corian, LED, real time control system, 132 3/8 inches in diameter; each stone 43 3/8 x 22 1/4 x 13 1/2 inches. Courtesy of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.]
Media
Schedule
from October 11, 2013 to January 12, 2014