Exhibition/event has ended.
Midori Mitamura “365 Encyclopedia”
Yu Harada
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Artists
Midori Mitamura
Mitamura, born in 1964, has been exhibiting her works in Japan and abroad under the theme of “dramas that people can step into”, focusing on installations that combine motifs of everyday recollections and sentiments on media such as photographs or everyday objects. In recent years, as her life’s work, she has been holding the residency-based art project “Art & Breakfast” in various parts of the world.
In this exhibition, she will be showing a series of collages that she has been working on every day since January 1st 2021, where she uses the encyclopedia as the main subject. Starting with the first volume of the encyclopedia that was in her family house, everyday Mitamura reads about 20 pages of it, draws pictures and diagrams on the encyclopedia’s thin sheets, overlaps and separates them to create a single image.
Mitamura calls this method of drawing and making collages of found photos from books “found drawing”. By tracing the outlines of landscapes, people and things, as if to confirm the fact that they existed there, she hopes that the photographs and drawings used to convey information will take on a personality and begin to play a new role.
For example, in the section of the Japanese alphabet’s syllable “Sa” (サ), we can find right next to each other the words of Monkey (expelled “sa-ru” in Japanses) and Sartre (expelled “sa-ru-to-ru”) which automatically generates a revelatory inevitability of motifs encountered by chance in alphabetical order. “I read the print on the page and try to decipher the meaning of the picture”, so it can be said that the “found drawing” is a production method in which Mitamura’s process is composed of objects she encounters and are directly translated into a two-dimensional form.
Mitamura says, “Every day, I turn to the encyclopedia and follow the entries that cross the pages without context, and from point to point, my perspective and thoughts travel through abstract time and space. Every day, I don’t know what I can create. I enjoy “not knowing” as if it were the first place I visit on a journey. Even on days when I am not satisfied with my work, I accept that it is the picture of that day.”
In this exhibition, she will be showing a series of collages that she has been working on every day since January 1st 2021, where she uses the encyclopedia as the main subject. Starting with the first volume of the encyclopedia that was in her family house, everyday Mitamura reads about 20 pages of it, draws pictures and diagrams on the encyclopedia’s thin sheets, overlaps and separates them to create a single image.
Mitamura calls this method of drawing and making collages of found photos from books “found drawing”. By tracing the outlines of landscapes, people and things, as if to confirm the fact that they existed there, she hopes that the photographs and drawings used to convey information will take on a personality and begin to play a new role.
For example, in the section of the Japanese alphabet’s syllable “Sa” (サ), we can find right next to each other the words of Monkey (expelled “sa-ru” in Japanses) and Sartre (expelled “sa-ru-to-ru”) which automatically generates a revelatory inevitability of motifs encountered by chance in alphabetical order. “I read the print on the page and try to decipher the meaning of the picture”, so it can be said that the “found drawing” is a production method in which Mitamura’s process is composed of objects she encounters and are directly translated into a two-dimensional form.
Mitamura says, “Every day, I turn to the encyclopedia and follow the entries that cross the pages without context, and from point to point, my perspective and thoughts travel through abstract time and space. Every day, I don’t know what I can create. I enjoy “not knowing” as if it were the first place I visit on a journey. Even on days when I am not satisfied with my work, I accept that it is the picture of that day.”
Schedule | Nov 18 (Thu) 2021-Dec 12 (Sun) 2021 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://sypgallery.com/2021-11-mitamura/ | ||||
| Venue | Yu Harada https://www.yuharada.com/en | ||||
| Location | 10-10 Sumiyoshicho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0065 | ||||
| Access | 4 minute walk from exit A2 at Akebonobashi Station on the Toei Shinjuku line, 12 minute walk from the Kawada exit of Wakamatsu-kawada Station on the Toei Oedo line. | ||||
| Phone | 090-6001-1880 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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