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UID:events.uid.5009@www.discovernikkei.org
DTSTART:20150724T000000Z
DTEND:20151004T000000Z
DESCRIPTION:The Regeneration exhibit evokes a minimalist design and aesthet
 ic &ndash\; like a Japanese-style garden of contemplation &ndash\; with it
 s tightly bounded compositions of gravel and rocks and sparse vegetation. 
 The artists involved: Tsuneko Kokubo &amp\; Toru Fujibayashi are senior ar
 tists with extensive\, fascinating and variant backgrounds. Both artists e
 xperienced various aspects of Canada&rsquo\;s Internment policy of Japanes
 e Canadian citizens during the Second World War\, an occurrence which deep
 ly influenced their lives. At the same time\, there is a sense of wearines
 s which attends this association. It is important to give context to the h
 istory but not hang a definitive or simplistic placard around the exhibiti
 on or artists involved. To put too fine a point on ethnicity or blame/cred
 it all influence on such blatant and egregious ethnocentrism\, takes away 
 from the individuality of the artists themselves\, and of course\, their w
 ork. The Internment issue is both an ever-present and yet oftentimes uninv
 ited presence\, and both artists acknowledge and/or disregard this influen
 ce in interesting ways. Regeneration\, at its root\, is about memory &ndas
 h\; what is retained and how it manifests itself in the world.\nThere is a
  misty-memory quality to Koko&rsquo\;s figurative and impressionistic piec
 es\; parts of poems\, writ large. They are delicate and dramatic. She has 
 melted herself into the past and onto the surface of each piece. She is th
 e abandoned fishing boat on the Fraser River\; the girl in the kimono clut
 ching the doll\; she is the fish that flashes in the water. Fluidity of fo
 rm and dreamy disparateness connote both traditional influences and a high
 ly personalized evocation of everyday and exceptional events.\nAlissa J. R
 ubin addresses something similar in her article &ldquo\;Horror is a Consta
 nt\, as Artists Depict War.&rdquo\; (New York Times\, August 28th\, 2014).
 \nThe vocabulary of war\, whether images or words\, must be reimagined by 
 each new generation of artists as it seeks to depict the consequences of c
 onflict &hellip\; today&rsquo\;s artists are not alone &hellip\;[t]heir pr
 edecessors have given them a way to see\, and to transform\, even the most
  nihilistic of history&rsquo\;s moments into something with meaning.&rdquo
 \;\nKoko\, like Francisco de Goya\, Kitaoka Fumio\, and Fiona Banner\, cre
 ates a visual\, emotional and intellectual response to societal issues too
  vast and convoluted to address in other ways. The creation of beauty out 
 of chaos is a response to conflict and one which Koko has choreographed th
 rough multiple mediums over a life-time of re-envisioning reality.&nbsp\;\
 nToru&rsquo\;s work is as concrete and elemental as stone sculpture can be
 . Not soft\, of course\, but highly polished\, and smooth\, affecting/effe
 cting flow or flowering\, rupture and eruption with a subtle but strong ph
 ysicality in flushed tones of black and white and grey all over. There is 
 a quiet dignity to these works\; they carry great weight (literally and fi
 guratively) but with sensitivity. We are accustomed to sculpture being: co
 mmemorative\, symbolic\, representative\, decorative\, but we are less fam
 iliar with seeing sculpture as an exercise in the acceptance and adoration
  of form. Toru&rsquo\;s work exudes that type of symbiotic self-determinat
 ion which Michelangelo described when he said\, &ldquo\;Every block of sto
 ne has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover i
 t.&rdquo\; In the tradition of: Eric Gill\, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska\, Ben Ni
 cholson\, Barbara Hepworth\, Constantin Brancusi\, Henry Moore\, and Isamu
  Noguchi\, Toru&rsquo\;s work evokes that same &lsquo\;rightness of form&r
 squo\;\, that fascinating feeling that one gets when they see a work of ar
 t that seems (somehow) exactly as it should be. This is what happens when 
 artists find their medium and are so attuned to the application of their c
 raft that they &ldquo\;tap into something called &ldquo\;nondeclarative me
 mory&rdquo\; or &ldquo\;procedural memory&rdquo\;&mdash\;a recall of motor
  skills and tasks that have been learned and retained almost automatically
 \, such as riding a bike&rdquo\; (Exploring the Link Between Art and Memor
 y\, by Michael Anft\, Johns Hopkins Magazine\, Nov.30th\, 2011). The simpl
 e elegance of these works is due to this type of organic creation\; a well
 spring of artistic observance combined with life-long-learned practice.\nR
 egeneration\, at its heart\, is a way of seeing\; a study of memory and th
 e motivations and methods with which we are able to understand lives lived
 . As the title tells us\, these works are about life and death\, but they 
 also give us a glimpse of the doing in between.\nArin Fay\, Curator (2015)
 \n<a href="http://thelangham.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ckca-logo-e1401
 827040856.jpg"></a><a href="http://thelangham.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/0
 4/bcac.jpg"></a>
DTSTAMP:20240419T031554Z
SUMMARY:"Regeneration" art exhibition in Kaslo\, BC
URL:/en/events/2015/07/24/regeneration-art-exhibition-in-kaslo-bc/
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