ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Fergus McCaffrey is pleased to present Matthew Barney, Carolee Schneemann, Kazuo Shiraga, and Min Tanaka at our Tokyo location, on-view October 15, 2020 through January 23, 2021.
Exhibiting together for the first time, this selection of visionary artists seeks to prompt cross-generational insights, from East to West, into the physicality that underscores the act of artmaking. Beginning with Kazuo Shiraga’s historically groundbreaking performance; Challenging Mud (1955) is the original intersection between dance, performance, painting and sculpture. Existing solely as documentation, the work foresaw the importance of archiving the body as a tool for expression, and the need to develop new systems for capturing immaterial variables such as time and space. This animating drive, alongside its archival challenges, is articulated in the shared expressions of Kazuo Shiraga, Matthew Barney, Carolee Schneemann and Min Tanaka.
Together these artists frame a vision of artmaking that challenges the established art historical lexicon of form, matter, and structure, and unearths a shared language of human embodiment articulated through dance, performance, painting and sculpture. Barney, Schneemann, Shiraga and Tanaka each express, in their varied approaches, a personal philosophy of dynamic corporeality, staging the physical body as a vehicle for what Guattari calls “a thither side of the outline called Story; a body without organs.
In 1975 I was concentrating on certain displacements of painting, film and video. Up to and Including Her Limits (earliest version in London called Trackings) was also a physicalized extension of the Super 8 diary film “Kitch’s Last Meal” which preoccupied me from 1973–1976. My questions then: Was I, as an artist, more actual in the dailiness of the diary film — assumed active in the labor which produced the film and was also as film’s subject?
1975年、私は絵画、映画、ビデオのある種の変位に集中していた。《Up to and Including Her Limits（ロンドンでの初期作品は《Trackings》と呼ばれていた）》は、1973年から1976年まで私を夢中にさせた、スーパーエイトの日記映画 「Kitch’s Last Meal 」の物理的な延長線上にあった。当時の私の疑問：芸術家としての私は、日記映画の日常性の中で、より現実的であったのだろうか。
Min Tanaka
A dolphin of the darkness
At the feet of the miracle in Japan
Draws a boundary line of sensations
his flame of Zen.
On hither side of the identity called Industry
on the thither side of the outline called Story
a body without organs.
田中泯
闇のイルカ
日本の奇跡の足の下に
感覚のもうひとつの境界線を画した
彼の禅の炎。
工業というアイデンティティのこちら側の
物語という筋書きの向こう側の
器官なき身体。
“The types of characters that I gravitate towards, the types of icons, tend to have a heavy physicality.”
—Matthew Barney
Vessel, host occidental guests,
To pattern, come blood, giving form.
Holographic condition,
The whole in every part.
Warm blood, terrestrial guests,
Take to the southern sea, breathing.
Antarctic host and vessel, proud,
Cetacean guests returning.
Holographic Entrypoint by Matthew Barney
船と主人と西洋客人。産みの苦しみ血を伴うも。
大経綸の条件なるか。一こま一こまにすべてあり。
血潮の温かき陸棲客人。目指せ南海。息吹き新たに。南極の主人。
船も誇らか。客人鯨は帰りゆく。
マシュー・バーニー
ホログラフィック・エントリーポイント（上田邦義訳）
Clever people think and do things with a cool head.
Then, somebody like me will use mental energy [kiryoku].
How exciting it will be if I can immediately put an idea
in practice, as it comes to me, without worrying about
the result—throwing all of my past pesky hesitation
out of the window.
頭の良い人間は考えて冷くやる、僕のような男は気力でやろうと。
思いついたら結果なんか考えるいとまも持たせず実行して、しゃにむに今までくっついてた僕のためらいを一まとめにまるめておっぽり出したら良い気持ちだろう。
