ARTCOURT Gallery will present an exhibition of Taiyo Kimura. Kimura has been presenting artwork in many cities around the world. This is his first solo exhibition at ARTCOURT Gallery.

Kimura’s work encompasses various media including sculpture, video and installation; however, his expression is consistent. He takes everyday objects and settings that are familiar to most of us as his raw material. He then draws out uneasiness or ‘negative’ phenomenon in our daily life with his characteristic humor and keenness, and pulls out intuitive reaction from the viewers.

The voice of people chatting and laughing coming out of earphones that are stitched all over the surface of the cute teddy bear, the sculpture composed of alternating bird cages and mice traps, the myriads of eyes over a page from a fashion magazine … Some viewers laugh unintentionally while others express their rejection when they see the repulsiveness Kimura’s work displays, and the tricks and appearances that resemble pranks grade school kids would do. To dig the physiological sensations and complex emotions that one might experience from Kimura’s work will make them aware of the hypocrisy and indifference in the society and will lead to re-validate their own nerves that have become dull in the everyday life.

Kimura produces works by using his instinctive senses to pick up irrationality within himself as well as in this world. Body, which is the foundation for all experiences, and physiological interaction, which comes with the experience, are his core subject that has appeared in his work as direct expression, often radically. He has further developed this idea about body in recent years. A body as a container for existence, memory and conscious accumulated into the body, time and space that surrounds the body, and death = disappearance of the body — taking these as his motifs and ontological approach to examine the relationship in those motifs, Kimura has been working on projects.

It happens that you remember a place you visited in the past without any reason. It might be a sign from the space or people who was passing by there trying to tell you something. I have created works as if to re-visualize what I felt from those places.
New York where I stayed for one year last year had something special that made me think this city was destined to become the center of the world. The last two months of my stay, I lived in an apartment where I walked by ghost-like elderly people in a long hallway, and I ended up creating a video as if I was lead into this place. I took a different approach from my usual method of seeking a clear concept and produced solely relying on my instincts as if to let the space take a lead and myself dedicated as a mediator. — Taiyo Kimura

This exhibition will showcase Taiyo Kimura’s current featuring the latest video installation project, which was produced while his one-year-long-stay in New York, and some highlights from the existing collection selected by the artist himself.