ANOMALY

Yusuke Asai, Motohiko Odani, Yoshiaki Kaihatsu, Akiko Kinugawa, Yosuke Takayama, Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, Tatzu Nishi, Elena Knox, Ryoko Yashima

Group exhibition

Bodies Embodied

2024.11.7 (Thu.) - 2024.11.30 (Sat.)

Open：12:00 – 18:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and 11/23（Sat.）

Ryoko Yashima“MEMENTO MOMO” screening event & talk event ：11.30(Sat.) 18:00 –19:30
※Please note that there are some intense scenes.

※Opening reception will not be held.
※This exhibition includes works that contain sexual content.Minors should view with parental consent, while adults are encouraged to use their own discretion.

Motohiko Odani Electro (Heart A) (2004) Photo: Keizo Kioku ©Motohiko ODANI

We at ANOMALY are pleased to announce the upcoming group exhibition “Bodies Embodied”, which will run from November 7 (Thu.) to 30 (Sat.), 2024.
The exhibition will display works by nine artists: Yusuke Asai, Motohiko Odani, Yoshiaki Kaihatsu, Akiko Kinugawa, Yosuke Takayama, Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, Tatzu Nishi, Elena Knox, and Ryoko Yashima.

While centered around those of human beings, this exhibition widens the definition of “body” to include a wide variety of bodies, including those of animals, machines, and even the products of human activities. In so doing, it examines how diverse existences are mutually connected and coexist. Through this approach, it encourages us to broaden our understanding of bodies and take a multi-faceted perspective on them.

Bodies are important constituents of individual identity. Artists often explore themes related to culture, gender, ethnicity, and age through body. They also ponder the representations and expectations of bodies in contemporary society. The exhibition views how media define bodily beauty and the influence this exerts on people. In addition, it prompts people to think about extensions and modifications of bodies by means such as the fusion of body and technology.

Yusuke Asai is an artist who uses mud and other familiar materials to produce paintings that appear to seamlessly harmonize a diversity of life forms. One painting seems to have an endless repetition of the same image, but actually there is not a single image that is exactly the same as any of the others. This is suggestive of the double microscopic and macroscopic worlds of our bodies.

Yusuke Asai Hand-Gripped (2023) ©Yusuke ASAI

Motohiko Odani produces symbolic human statues that look like mutations of human beings incorporating the elements of various organisms. He is renowned for his augmented corporeal representations including paradoxical phenomena such as phantom limbs.*1 His art calls to mind the theories of Stephen Jay Gould, to the effect that evolution does not move forward in a straight line, but is achieved through devolution, mutation, and natural selection.

Motohiko Odani Dollo’s Law (2009-2010) Photo： Keizo Kioku ©Motohiko ODANI

Yoshiaki Kaihatsu, who is currently holding a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, perceives receipts as everyday records=diaries by other people, and transforms them into paintings. He likewise regards and displays these receipts as bodies in the current age of runaway capitalism.

Yoshiaki Kaihatsu 24 FEB. 2022 (Russia Invades Ukraine-White Version) -Receipt Painting (2022) ©Yoshiaki KAIHATSU

Akiko Kinugawa believes that a boundless domain of equality spreads out in the recesses of all life forms composing the world. She produces paintings that look like blow-ups of the diverse little parts and cells forming the body. The paintings suggest that our overall images are made of little worlds.

Akiko Kinugawa return (2019) ©Akiko KINUGAWA

Yosuke Takayama is known for his roughly carved, deformed sculptures of wood topped by cans from canned coffee that the artist is fond of drinking for human heads, which are said to govern our thought (to a certain degree). The statues born of carved wood sometimes incorporate the peripheral environment and landscape itself, thereby expanding our concept of statues of heads.

“Courtyard”installation view, CAPSULE, Tokyo (2016) Photo： Hideto Nagatsuka ©Yosuke TAKAYAMA

The exhibition shows two new works by Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group. One is the prototype of a work based on the fragmentary memory of an experience that Mizuno, a former member of the group, had in the city of Atami. It expresses an art of possession by generating a dance by Mizuno and AI, and transferring it to a doll. Derived from this work, the other takes as its theme the borderlines between art and entertainment that the group has explored since Na-Lucky, an exhibition that was held in the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku ward last year, and that of body and desire, which has been carried on since its organization.

Tatzu Nishi is known for his large-scale installations that have a catabolic effect on space and time. In this exhibition, he will be showing works that boldly deconstruct and reconstruct Greek sculptures at the foundation of ideas of beautiful bodies, with lights attached to illuminate them, and photographs.

Elena Knox is an artist who, while versed in diverse forms of expression, makes deep probes of issues embedded in human society and presents their figures as works that are both humorous and ironical. This exhibition will show her video work Canny, in which there appear real hostesses and contestants of quiz game shows revolving around mental calculation, and a fembot that searches the web and announces the results. In this video, the women are objectified, and lewd remarks are made about their bodies. Through it, Knox not only takes up the issue of gender, but also presents a future in which the boundaries between inorganic and organic have disappeared and physicality has a new horizon.

Ryoko Yashima, who is making her first appearance at ANOMALY, is engaged in artistic activities on the island of Momoshima in the Seto Inland Sea. She has held showings of MEMENTO MOMO, a video showing her raising and slaughtering a pig, and eating its meat, in this rich natural environment. This exhibition will display some of her photographic works.

Taking “MATTER(s)” as its key word, the previous group exhibition in ANOMALY explored questions such as how artists interact with “matter” (substances, affairs, problems, etc.), how “matter” (works) exists, and what “matters” (circumstances, situations, etc.) we are facing.

This exhibition brings together works related to human and various other types of “bodies.” We would be delighted if it succeeds in making the diverse constituent elements of bodies produce a multilayered reflection of us in the present age.

*1 Phantom limbs refers to the sensation of limbs (arms and legs) that have been amputated still being there.