Archives: Esibizioni

Shozo Shimamoto show for the first time in Bologna at the Basilica of Santo Stefano

For the first time in Bologna, the works of Shozo Shimamoto will be exhibited from 28th January to 17th February 2011 in the attractive surroundings of the Basilica of Santo Stefano. This is a unique cultural event. The show, organised by the Shozo Shimamoto Association in collaboration with the Morra Foundation and the Pari & Dispari Archive, will take place during Artefiera Off. The curator is Achille Bonito Oliva.

Works exhibited will include pieces from the last performances by the Japanese master in Italy in 2007 and 2008, from among which will also be shown the video directed by Mario Franco.

The “Gutai concrete art movement” was born in Japan in 1954, or more accurately, in the Kintetsu department stores in Osaka. Its two principal members, Jiro Yoshihara and Shozo Shimamoto, were joined by other leading names and they all created a series of innovative works, which predated the most important western interdisciplinary movements such as happening, performance, conceptual, and protest art.

This movement investigates the relationship between the spirit and the material, the meeting/collision of zen philosophy and western culture. Gutai represents the synthesis between the reclamation of values which have been forgotten, destroyed and wiped out by devastating events such as the second world war and the contamination of Japanese culture by external forces; primarily those of America. Painting, calligraphy, sculpture (but above all performance), events, theatrical works, improvsation (always with a strong emphasis on audience participation) are the stylistic code of this movement, which has always sought to challenge the concept of traditional art. This vanguard style significantly predates the Fluxus network and the western avant-garde experience of the sixties. It even influences modern American expressionism.

The careful selection of Shozo Shimamoto’s works, exhibited for the first time in Bologna, introduces the spectator to a world of colour and materials dominated by the strength of change in coloured mixtures, wich are dictated by sage zen sign language, present during performances. The intensity of the act and the concrete nature of the material represent the fundamental dualism of Shimamoto’s art. The union of these two forces clearly affirm the deep vitality of his art. Works from his recent Italian performances, made with the “antitechnique” of bottle crash will be integrated into the presentation using specific video documentation, which tells of  a powerful energy capable of touching and unleashing deep urges and emotions. The pictorial material connects intimately with gravitational and atmosperic randomness, dictated by the concrete nature of the world, to melt into a visible and tangible Super Nova. The material consistency of colour therefore becomes the real protagonist of Shimamoto’s art, which proclaiming the “banishment of the paintbrush” asserts the validity of using any instrument (be they hands, a palette knife or throwing bottles full of colour) to make art.

The Shozo Shimamoto association, which is organising the show was set up in Italy and Japan in October 2007. It is a non-profit organisation whose goal is the promotion in Italy and worldwide of Shimamoto’s artistic research. For this reason, it is very active in the field of communications. It organises workshops, work experience placements, conferences, and seminars centred on the figure and the work of the Japanese master. The organisation is also involved in certifying the authenticity of Shozo Shimamoto’s works whether in Italy or the rest of the world, with the obective of forming a comprehensive archive of the artist.

SECTION “HOMAGE TO SHOZO SHIMAMOTO”

Artworks of the first Gutai’s period

Room A

Whirlpool (Vortice), Japan, 1967

(Right, wall of entry)

Artwork realized by using of a funnel, long whose walls some liquid colour has been made to strain.

Imbuto 05 (Funnel), Nishinomiya, 1965/1985

(Right, wall of entry)

Artwork realized by using of a funnel, long whose walls has been made to strain some oil colour (1965).

In 1985 to the artwork the “A” of the Japanese alphabet has been assistant, symbol that means “beginning of everything”, “principle”.

Gutai 01, 1950

(Left, wall of entry)

Realized in 1950 the artwork results to be one of the most ancient, if not the first of the Gutai period.

Technique: collage of cardboard and aluminium sheets. A similar artwork has been bought from Tade Modern of London.

Gutai 03, Nishinomiya, 1953

(Left, wall of entry)

An imputable artwork to the first Gutai period. It has been realized by using of a particular varnish, employed in the maintenance of the elevators. An analogous artwork has been published in the first number of the Gutai journal, number in which Jiro Yoshihara introduces the Gutai group.

Buco, (Hole), Osaka, 1946

(Left wall)

The artwork has been realized using as base some newspapers (Japanese) glued between them (the material support still visible on the back) covered of colour, in which, in a second moment, the opening of the hole has been realized. In the left vertical border, it is possible to find the signature of the master.

Gutai, 1953

(Left wall)

An imputable artwork to the first Gutai period. Historically among the most important, because published on the first number of the Gutai journal, direct and written by the master founder of the movement Jiro Yoshihara.

It is realized gluing pieces of paper rolled up on which the colour has been spread out.

Lavoro Gutai con buco (Gutai artwork with hole), Japan, 1953

(Right wall)

Gutai artwork exposed to the Gutai demonstration of Ashiya in 1954, and subsequently (after)  to the Sander Gallery in Germany.

Lancio di bottiglia 04, Osaka, 1991

(Frontal wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour. In the execution time some objects have been positioned above and under the cloth, carefully chosen by the master with the purpose to give a direction to the colour. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour.

Taiho (Cannone – Cannon), Japan, 1956

(Frontal wall)

The artwork, published in the magazine Gutai n° 5, constitutes an unicum for his characteristic executive material. It is realized through the aid of a cannon, from which the colours inserted in specific plastic containers have been separate on a special cloth.

Crash Bottle (Schianto di Bottiglia), 2000

(Two artworks of the same series, one positioned to the right of the jobs of the entry to the room C, the other in the frontal wall on the left side).

The artworks have been realized through the throwing of bottles, that contain the oil colours, from an helicopter.

A Sesshu, 1997

(Left wall)

The artwork has been realized using as base an original drawing of Sesshu (Buddhist Zen Monk that lived at the end of ‘400 and that in China learned the technique of the monochrome; he was one of the more interesting Japanese artists of the Muromachi age), on which has been represented the letter A of the Japanese alphabet.

The artwork re-enters in the series “A.”, group of jobs in which the master Shimamoto often makes reference to the letter A of the Japanese alphabet, symbol of good wish that means “the beginning of everything ” also means ” some art, the creation, the principle”. To the actual state this is the job more rated of the master, because the use of the appreciated fifteenth-century drawing.

Lancio di Bottiglia (Throwing of bottle), Osaka, 1990

(Wall right the other two artworks ” throwing of bottle 02 ” and ” throwing of bottles 03 “, that complete the series, are exposed in the room D)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour. In the execution time some objects have been positioned above and under the cloth, carefully chosen by the master with the purpose to give a direction to the colour. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour.

This is one of the last artworks realized with this technique.

Tela grande (Big Cloth)

(Left wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour. In the execution time some objects have been positioned above and under the cloth, carefully chosen by the master with the purpose to give a direction to the colour. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour.

2 Opere (2 Artworks), 1979/1985

(Frontal wall)

The artwork has been realized by the master in different times in 1979 and in 1985, using the same type of colour (to oil) but with different techniques.

Artworks room D

Lancio di Bottiglia 03 (Throwing of bottle), Osaka, 1990

(Right, entry wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour. In the execution time some objects have been positioned above and under the cloth, carefully chosen by the master with the purpose to give a direction to the colour. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour.

Lancio di Bottiglia 02 (Throwing of bottle), Osaka, 1990

(Left, entry wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour. In the execution time some objects have been positioned above and under the cloth, carefully chosen by the master with the purpose to give a direction to the colour. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour.

Tela grande, 2000 (Big Cloth)

(Left wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour.

Tela grande (Big Cloth)

(Right wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of the colour.

Lancio su Cashmere (Throwing on Cashmere), Performance Londra, “Japan year in London”, 2001

(Big cloth, frontal wall)

Artwork realized through the throwing of bottles containing oil colour on a Cashmere cloth. The pictorial surface is characterized by the presence of the glassy residues of the throwing englobed in the colour. A artwork realized in 2001 in the Performance of London ”Japan year in London”.

A pillow to dream, (Un cuscino per sognare 02), Koshieguchi, 2005

The pillow has been realized using the cashmer painted in 2001 in the Performance of London ”Japan year in London”

The pillow takes back in its form the letter A (lengthened) of the Japanese alphabet. The artwork re-enters in the series “A”, group of jobs in which the master Shimamoto often makes  reference to the letter A of the Japanese alphabet, symbol of good wish that means “the beginning of everything ” also means ” some art, the creation, the principle”. The pillow has been sewn from Nishizwa Miyuki “ the Newspaper Woman”.

Artworks room B

(Right size, “Homage to Shimamoto”, artworks 2000/2005)

10 metri (10 m), Itami, 2000

Artwork realized through the throwing (from a height of thirty meters) of colours to water-colour from a crane to which the master had been insured. The colours were inserted in special plastic glasses with cork and assembled in a sphere built from Loco, a disciple of master. The artwork is long around ten meters, from which the name. The artistic performance realized in Venice has been taken care of and organized by another important master of Gutai Yasuo Sumi.

Ice Artwork (Opera di ghiaccio) 03, September 2004

(Right, wall of entry)

The artwork constitutes an unicum for his characteristic executive material.

The job has been realized preparing on the cloth of the plates of frozen water-colours.

Ice Artwork (Opera di ghiaccio) 06, September 2004

(Left, wall of entry)

The artwork constitutes an unicum for his characteristic executive material.

The job has been realized preparing on the cloth of the plates of frozen water-colours.

Ape, Itami, 2000

Artwork realized through the throwing (from a height of thirty meters) of colours to water-colour from a crane to which the master had been insured. The colours were inserted in special plastic glasses with cork and assembled in a sphere built from Loco, a disciple of master. The artwork is long around ten meters. The artistic performance realized in Venice has been taken care of and organized by another important master of Gutai Yasuo Sumi.

Lancio di Loco (Throwing of Loco), Itami, 2000

Artwork realized through the throwing (from a height of thirty meters) of water-colour from a crane to which the master had been insured. The colours were inserted in special plastic glasses with cork and assembled in a sphere built from Loco, a disciple of master. The artwork is long around ten meters. The artistic performance realized in Venice has been taken care of and organized by another important master of Gutai Yasuo Sumi.

Lancio di Loco (Throwing of Loco), Itami, 2000

Artwork realized through the throwing (from a height of thirty meters) of water-colour from a crane to which the master had been insured. The colours were inserted in special plastic glasses with cork and assembled in a sphere built from Loco, a disciple of master. The artwork is long around ten meters. The artistic performance realized in Venice has been taken care of and organized by another important master of Gutai Yasuo Sumi.

Helicopter Performance Work 03

Helicopter Performance Work 06

Helicopter Performance Work 07, Trevi (Italy), 2005

Artworks realized through the throwing, from an helicopter, of water-colours mixed to  Japanese ink, and contained in special plastic glasses. The work has been performed by the master Shimamoto during a particular performance realized in the sporting field of Trevi (Italy), May 26, 2005.

Paraventi (Screens), Japan, around 1990

The two works belong to the series of the screens,realized through the use of Japanese models on whose body has been spread out Japanese ink.

SECTION “HOMAGE TO YASUO SUMI”

Artworks room B

(Left size, frontal wall)

Pergamene (Parchments series, parchments on cloth n°4),Itami, 1981

(Frontal wall)

Artworks realized on cloth through the aid of an abacus and a vibrator to stretch the Japanese ink and the colour.

“Hanging scroll 2”, Parchments series, parchments on paper and cloth, Japan, 1981.

(Left work, wall of entry)

Artworks realized on paper and cloth through the aid of an abacus and a vibrator to stretch the Japanese ink and the colour.

Central artwork, Itami, 1997

(Left size, frontal wall)

Artwork realized on paper through the aid of an abacus and a vibrator to stretch the Japanese ink and the colour.

Itami, 2005

(Right,wall of entry)

Artwork realized on cloth through the aid of an abacus and a vibrator to stretch the Japanese ink and the colour.

Itami, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2005

(Left size, frontal wall, big cloth)

Artwork realized through the aid of an abacus, a vibrator and a Japanese umbrella (bangasa) to stretch the ink and the colour on the cloth.

Realized by master Sumi during a performance in reggio Emilia (Italy) in month of May 2005.

Itami,2004

(Left size, frontal wall)

Artwork realized on cloth through the aid of an abacus to stretch the colour.

SECTION “HOMAGE YOZO UKITA ”
Artworks room Zero

(artwork from left)

One Point and One Thread, Japan, 2005
Oli painting with a gunny sack collage.

Wings, Japan, 2006
Oli painting with a gunny sack collage.

One Point 02, Japan, 2006
Oli painting with a gunny sack collage.

One Point 01, Japan, 2006
Oli painting with a gunny sack collage.

New Concept, Japan, 2006
Oli painting with a gunny sack collage.

A Loop, Japan, 2006
Oli painting with a gunny sack collage.

Preface by Giuseppe Morra – President of the Associazione Shōzō Shimamoto

We worked together with Shōzō Shimamoto on the fertile humus of Campania where his poetics absorbed and moulded spaces of beauty, imbuing them with sounds and colours in dialogue with the past. A Samurai of colours, he reconfigured the crystallized symbols of beauty and the sacred, reinterpreting effigies of the Buddha, Psyche, Nike, and Venus through his painting, conveying a message of irenicism. The organic energy of the pictorial matter that erupts from the automatism of his calligraphic gesture is both a perceptive and an existential vitalism. In Piazza Dante, during the 2006 performance Un’Arma per la pace (“A Weapon for Peace”), Shimamoto pelted a huge canvas with coloured paints from a height of forty metres to the strains of Rombo di suono scintillante per Dante, Beatrice e Virgilio by Charlemagne Palestine.

The synergy of the two artists, centred entirely on the otherness of language, set in motion the possibility of a complex relationship with history, art and literature, opening up to an imagery far removed from the rulebound. For the works/event Tra Oriente e Occidente (“Between East and West”) (2008) Shimamoto performed in Naples, Capri, and Punta Campanella, probing their cultural stratifications. The dynamic expressiveness of the painting outlined actions through which echoed the millennial union between the peoples of East and West: the movement of sound and colour encountered the reality of the beauty of that setting. On the other hand, the artist created palpable forms of synaesthesia in the splendour of the garden of Saint James’ Charterhouse, as he hurled coloured paint at musical instruments and long canvases spread across the ground.

At Punta Campanella he bathed mannequins in colour – dancing brides, set in contrast with the iconic statues of art history. The innocence of the child’s gesture is a mnestic trace supporting the thrust of his actions in tune with the complexity of emotional life. When Shimamoto has the paint burst onto the white canvas, the creative process results in a theatricality that cancels out the separation between event and work. The individualistic ideology of the isolated creator and the fetishism of the work are defused, opening up to it the possibility of being in the world offering itself: a sophisticated means of achieving a sense of universal communion.

SHOZO SHIMAMOTO – TIME RACK
Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva

Fondazione Sant’Elia | PALERMO
13^th June > 6^th August 2018

press conference
12^th  June 2018 6pm
Palazzo Sant’Elia

– A colour without matter does not exist. When we are about to create, we do not throw away the brush; there is no hope of emancipating colours. Without the paintbrush the colourants will come to life for the first time. Any tool may be used to good effect in place of a paint brush: one’s bare hands or the paint spatula would be a start. To these we might add the objects that members of the Gutai group use, such as watering cans, umbrellas, vibrators, abaci, skates, and toys, not to mention feet, guns, or anything else. And amid all these, the paintbrush may even reappear, because there is certainly room for something from the past in innovative work like this.

Shozo Shimamoto / ‘Gutai’ Bulletin n.6, Ōsaka, 1957

In the mid-fifties, the Japanese artist Shozo Shimamoto [Osaka, 22^nd January 1928 – 25^th January 2013], began his adventure in the small city of Ashiya, producing a creative work in public; it was a garden where he and other artists carried out works of art consisting of performances where the work came into being before the eyes of the audience, with all the interference of a live event. Distancing themselves from the surrealist tradition and the influence of Duchamp, the Gutai group powerfully established themselves in terms of a new form of creativity centred around impulse.

Achille Bonito Oliva’s wide-ranging retrospective dedicated to the Japanese artist opens in Palermo at 6 pm on June 13^th and runs until 6^th August at the Fondazione Sant’Elia. The ‘SHOZO SHIMAMOTO/TIME RACK’ exhibition is a project by the Morra Foundation with the technical, logistic, and organisational support of the Shozo Shimamoto Association and the cooperation of the Fondazione Sant’Elia. A colour catalogue containing articles of particular historical and critical significance accompanies the exhibition, which offers an in-depth study of Shimamoto’s artistic career from his first innovative experiments in the 40s and 50s up to the performances of his last years. During the 1950s, Shimamoto spent his life in Japan – in the East – but he spent the first part of the twenty-first century mainly in the West, where he did his most important performances. The dialectic between these two periods points to an extraordinary, important, and single artistic process. During the 50s, Shimamoto began working as a painter, and, in his search for a new way of seeing and doing painting, he also began working on actions that would gradually transform into happenings. His work throughout his last years in Italy took quite the opposite direction: he used large-scale stage construction as an integral part of his performance, as reflected in the production of works that are the result of a public representative moment. ‘The aim is to expand the aesthetic space of the action as far as possible, encompassing both earth and sky. (…) Ultimately, Shimamoto is a nomadic samurai of art able to hit the mark thanks to the intelligent chance of a creative process seeking to pierce the inertia of the world and energise the community of men’, writes Achille Bonito Oliva.

The works on show at the Fondazione Sant’Elia, from Shimamoto’s early output with the Gutai group to the beautiful explosions of colour of the Campania period, are of great historical importance. The exhibition also brings his works on paper from the 1950s to the Italian public for the very first time. This retrospective dedicated to the works of Shozo Shimamoto is one of the high points of the many events organised as part of the Palermo Italian Capital of Culture 2018 programme.