Kai Ono・Shinji Mitsuzuka “curve”

Kai Ono・Shinji Mitsuzuka “curve”

Feb 10 (Fri.) – Feb 25 (Sat.), 2023

Hours: 11:00-19:00 (Closed on SUN, MON, and holidays)

Opening Reception: Friday Feb.10, from 18:00

Free Admission, no reservation required

Everyone is welcome to attend.

Venue: tagboat NINGYOCHO

The Parklex Ningyocho 1F, 7-1 Nihonbashi-Tomizawacho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 103-0006

Tagboat Co., Ltd. is pleased to announce the opening of a new gallery in Ningyocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo. The new art spot with an office and gallery is a spectacular space with a ceiling height of about 5 meters. We will provide you with new surprises and discovery by exhibiting in an ample space, which was impossible before.

The gallery’s Grand Opening Exhibition will be “curve” by Kai Ono and Shinji Mitsuzuka. Ono will exhibit “Prism-Raibow Mountain,” a 270 cm tall giant sculpture from his acrylic yarn “Prism Series,” which was presented at his graduation exhibition. Shinji Mitsuka will exhibit “Slapstick,” which won the Okamoto Toshiko Prize and the Audience Prize at the Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art Exhibition in 2022. The unique curves of these two works will be interwoven to create a powerful display, and we hope you will enjoy.

■ Tagboat’s New Gallery Grand Opening Exhibition “curve”

Tagboat has an image of Japan’s first online gallery of contemporary art, and some people may think of it as an e-commerce platform. In recent years, tagboat has established a permanent gallery in Hankyu Men’s Tokyo and has also focused on organizing art fairs in various locations.

In operating real space, we especially feel that the gallery significantly impacts artists’ exhibitions.

The most significant feature of the new gallery is its 5-meter ceiling height. We wanted to show works that could be displayed to the best of their ability in this space, so we chose the following two artists.

Kai Ono is a rising star who graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2022. He has developed a three-dimensional work called “Prism Series,” focusing on “the moment when nature and people interact in everyday life.” The 2.7-meter-high sculpture “Prism-Rainbow Mountain” has an unforgettable impact once seen, with acrylic yarns painstakingly applied to a shape reminiscent of towering rocks or living creatures. The dazzlingly colored woolen lines are neatly aligned and parallel when viewed from a certain point, creating an optical illusion that makes the work, which should have been three-dimensional, appear two-dimensional.

The title “Slapstick,” a work by Shinji Mitsuzuka that imitates a banana peel, refers to humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of regular physical comedy, for example, actors hitting by a stick. The giant banana is a piece about the contradictions and discomfort of society. The sense of stagnation that characterizes Japan in the coronavirus pandemic stems from political and social slippage, and the giant banana exists as if to ridicule this. This work, which won the Toshiko Okamoto Award and the Audience Award at the Exhibition of the Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art, will be lying comfortably in our high-ceilinged space, and we’d like to invite you to take a close look at it.

Both artists’ works have organic curves, each cutting into the white cube composed of straight lines uniquely. The two artists’ works are three-dimensional, with curves distorted to the square white cube. We hope that this exhibition will sound a warning to the world, which has fallen into the “what-if-something-happens syndrome” of being square and stodgy, and that it will make the world aware of the necessity of “curve.”

Tagboat Inc.

Kenji Tokumitsu

PROFILE

小野海 / Kai Ono

1995 Born in Hyogo prefecture

2019 Graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, Majored in Sculpture

2022 Completed postgraduate studies in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts

Awards
2014 The 39th Kobe Citizen’s Exhibition, Awarded Kobe Citizen’s Cultural Promotion Foundation Prize
2019 AAC Art Competition, Selected Prize
2020 Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi Mitsubishi Estate Co.,Ltd. Prize.