Exhibition/event has ended.
Michael Ho "Hidden in Plain Sight and Not Afraid to Die"
Tokyo International Gallery
Finished
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Artists
Michael Ho
Michael Rikio Ming Hee Ho (born in 1996 in Hawaii) is a Cantonese Japanese American artist practicing in Tokyo. Graduating BA in fine arts from UCLA in 2018, Ho works in both painting and sculpture to create complex work that stimulates situational discourse between the viewer and the work. Studying under artists such as Barbara Kruger and Andrea Fraser, Ho’s work frequently uses a combination of symbolic imagery and bold-type texts that are provocative or confronting when they are stand-alone but ambiguously complex when combined – the result being an opaque social commentary of absurdist and comical scale that puts the viewer in a position of interpretation.
For this exhibition, Ho has created a series of paintings and canvas sculptures that continue his practice of putting receivership at the core of the work. Intermixing texts from various mediums, ranging from news clippings, essays in art theory and even Reddit comments, Ho carefully formulates memorable texts and hand-paints them onto structural canvases saturated with symbolic imagery that reference Ho’s own oscillating relationship with American and Japanese culture. Ho’s larger-than-life monoliths stand their ground, provoking the viewer to make sense of their own physical and social position in relation to Ho’s own mixed but certain stance on a variety of political and theoretical discourse.
At first view, Ho’s oeuvre of work can be seemingly preaching and discordant. However, it is worthwhile to question the origins of such experiences the work triggers. The work is composed of a collage of “ready-made” texts and symbols after all, and the experiences they prompt exist only in the presence of the viewer. In fact, Ho says that the work intends to provoke but not to sermonize; the work is unapologetically material in its production, and the human presence of the artist, apparent in the hand-painted texts and imperfect scars of white from a manual printing process, alludes to a young artist, who, like all of us, feel ever so lost in the many layers of the social sublime.
The “deliberate realism” may be Ho’s attempt to be humble about fine art’s purpose in this world. Openly hidden behind the facade of spray paint, clear gesso, inkjet printer ink, paint, and resin, is ultimately, the living artist. In essence, Ho’s work asks the viewer to share his concerned gaze, as he wanders in and out of the institutional and constructivist curtains, often ignored. The vulnerability may not be the initial impression one has of Ho’s works, but if one were to, fortunately, talk to him during a visit to the exhibition, one would find that his commitment to the viewer (or, in his words, altruism) extends to a certain resolution about who he is as an individual in the contemporary social landscape. Hidden in Plain Sight and Not Afraid to Die may be challenging, but it is arguably an empathic communication of a very human scale.
For this exhibition, Ho has created a series of paintings and canvas sculptures that continue his practice of putting receivership at the core of the work. Intermixing texts from various mediums, ranging from news clippings, essays in art theory and even Reddit comments, Ho carefully formulates memorable texts and hand-paints them onto structural canvases saturated with symbolic imagery that reference Ho’s own oscillating relationship with American and Japanese culture. Ho’s larger-than-life monoliths stand their ground, provoking the viewer to make sense of their own physical and social position in relation to Ho’s own mixed but certain stance on a variety of political and theoretical discourse.
At first view, Ho’s oeuvre of work can be seemingly preaching and discordant. However, it is worthwhile to question the origins of such experiences the work triggers. The work is composed of a collage of “ready-made” texts and symbols after all, and the experiences they prompt exist only in the presence of the viewer. In fact, Ho says that the work intends to provoke but not to sermonize; the work is unapologetically material in its production, and the human presence of the artist, apparent in the hand-painted texts and imperfect scars of white from a manual printing process, alludes to a young artist, who, like all of us, feel ever so lost in the many layers of the social sublime.
The “deliberate realism” may be Ho’s attempt to be humble about fine art’s purpose in this world. Openly hidden behind the facade of spray paint, clear gesso, inkjet printer ink, paint, and resin, is ultimately, the living artist. In essence, Ho’s work asks the viewer to share his concerned gaze, as he wanders in and out of the institutional and constructivist curtains, often ignored. The vulnerability may not be the initial impression one has of Ho’s works, but if one were to, fortunately, talk to him during a visit to the exhibition, one would find that his commitment to the viewer (or, in his words, altruism) extends to a certain resolution about who he is as an individual in the contemporary social landscape. Hidden in Plain Sight and Not Afraid to Die may be challenging, but it is arguably an empathic communication of a very human scale.
Schedule | Mar 19 (Sat) 2022-Apr 23 (Sat) 2022 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Free | ||||
| Website | https://tokyointernationalgallery.co.jp/exhibition/hidden-in-plain-sight-and-not-afraid-to-die | ||||
| Venue | Tokyo International Gallery https://tokyointernationalgallery.co.jp/ | ||||
| Location | 3F Terrada Art Complex Ⅱ, 1-32-8 Higashi-Shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0002 | ||||
| Access | 7 minute walk from exit B at Tennozu Isle Station on the Rinkai line, 8 minute walk from the South exit of Tennozu Isle Station on the Tokyo Monorail line, 9 minute walk from the North exit of Shimbamba Station on the Keikyu line. | ||||
| Phone | 03-6810-4997 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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