Exhibition/event has ended.
[Image: K 15-30D / Paint (2022) 112 x 131 Paint can, fluorine resin paint]

Ryohei Kan "K 15-30D"

Hiroshima Art Center
Finished

Artists

Ryohei Kan
Ryohei Kan is an artist known mainly for his photographic and video works that take as their subject matter the exhibition spaces of museums and galleries themselves. Since 2013, Kan has been living and working in Germany, where he has been interested in the genealogy of the representation of the void in postwar Western art history, which uses the void as an indication of the tragedy and loss of the world wars. Kan then moved to Hiroshima in 2020, where he began researching the representation of "Hiroshima" in response to World War II in Asian postwar art history, based on the historicity of Hiroshima, the first city in the world to be hit by an atomic bomb.

In the process of this research, Kan noted that during the fifth conservation work on the A-bomb Dome from 2020 to 2021, an attempt was made for the first time to reproduce the colors of the time of radiation exposure in the selection of paints to be used to repair the original steel of the dome. After conducting follow-up research on the history of the conservation work and related materials, Kan obtained the paint (K 15-30D) that was actually used in the conservation work and has been working on paintings using that paint since 2021.

These paintings were created by allowing the repair paint from the original steel of the A-bomb Dome to soak into the entire canvas. No specific shapes or figures are depicted, and the stains and tones can be seen only slightly in the black-and-white color surfaces. In this approach, the paint itself is at the same time the subject of the work, and the intention is to bring out the autonomous movement and phenomena of the paint as a color material. The paintings, which are so large that they cover the viewer's entire field of vision, evoke the color field painting form of Post-Abstract Expressionism.

These works will be exhibited on August 6, 2022, the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and on August 15, the anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, both in anticipation of a return to the tragedies of the world wars of the 20th century, including President Putin's reference to the possibility of using nuclear weapons during the large-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine in 2022. People around the world shared a strong sense of crisis over events that foreshadowed a return to the tragedies of the world's great wars of the 20th century. With the world in such chaos, the question of what we can learn from history is once again being raised. The work presented by Kan in this exhibition will provide an opportunity to reconsider the nature of the art of remembrance, and how people living today, can respond to the various tragedies of human history and pass them on to future generations.

[Events]
Talk Event "From the Genealogy of Non-Nuclear Art in the 77 Years since the End of World War II
Date: Saturday, August 13, 17:00-19:00
Guests: Ryohei Kan + Yukinobu Okamura (curator of the Maruki Museum of Art)
*For more information, please visit the official website.

Schedule

Aug 6 (Sat) 2022-Aug 15 (Mon) 2022 

Opening Hours Information

Closed
Irregular holidays.
Notice
Exhibition Hours 13:00-19:00
FeeFree
VenueHiroshima Art Center
https://hiroshimaartcenter.netlify.app/
Location1F, 2-17-1, Konan, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-shi, Hiroshima 730-0825
AccessFrom the South exit of JR Hiroshima Station, take the Hiroshima bus (Yoshijima line) and get off at Yoshijima Byoin-iriguchi. The venue is 5 minute walk from there.
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