TAB Event - Tsubaki-kai Exhibition 2007 "Transfigurative"

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At Shiseido Gallery
Media: Painting, Installation

The “Tsubaki-kai” is an artists' circle and exhibition group that originated in 1947 to mark the post-war reopening of the Shiseido Gallery. The name “Tsubaki” comes from the Japanese word for “camellia,” the flower that has long been Shiseido's company symbol. (The suffix “-kai” means simply “gathering” or “circle.”) The membership of the Tsubaki-kai has changed at intervals over the years since its inception, with each group of artists' exhibitions representative of the Shiseido Gallery in each time period. The Fifth Tsubaki-kai, which ran through 2005, marked well over half a century of activity for the group.

The Sixth Tsubaki-kai will feature works by following new members Yasuko Iba, Masanori Sukenari, Hakamata Kyotaro, and Miwa Yanagi.

These relatively young artists (all are in their thirties and forties, the youngest group in the Tsubaki-kai's history) are all currently earning recognition in the contemporary art world, and potentially among Japan's next generation of expressive leaders.

The Sixth Tsubaki-kai will run for three years from 2007 to 2009. Its group exhibitions during this time will each feature some combination of four of the six artists, creating a gradual “change of faces” aimed at lending notes of dynamism and freshness over time.

The exhibition will also feature yearly exhibitions based on specific themes to be determined through interactive discussions among those artists showing their works that year. Already these discussions have resulted in the “Trans-Figurative” concept, which has become the overarching theme for the next three years. Referencing the two ideas of “going beyond (trans) specific forms (figures),” it symbolizes not only the participating artists' works, but also a transcendence by this group of the Tsubaki-kai of the past, and a transcendence by each individual artist of his or her current world-view. Naturally, there is also a strong possibility that these ongoing discussions will engender other new themes during the three-year period. In this way, the participating artists are not simply gathering beneath a pre-determined theme, but rather are actually creating that theme and building exhibitions accordingly as a result of their contact and interaction within the Tsubaki-kai. This approach being taken up by the Sixth Tsubaki-kai aims to bring new form and function to the “group show” format.

[Miwa Yanagi "My Grandmothers: Shizuka" 140x100cm, Lightjet Print, 2004]

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