The exhibition will present individual works by Umetsu and Auvray, as well as their first collaborations. The key visual for the show is a work that Auvray partially created in her Paris studio and then mailed to Umetsu to complete. The practices of taking turns, and of experimenting with varying levels of intervention, are sure to yield a range of collaborative creations. This endeavor disrupts and complicates the conventional creative process, probing questions such as “Does a work of art belong to an individual?” and “How is producing a work different from producing an exhibition?”
Umetsu began his career with an interrogation of his own historical position at the culmination of modern art’s development in Japan. In recent years his approach has greatly diversified as he explores the questions “What is art?” and “What does it mean to make things?” through drawing, painting, video, operation of an independent art school, exhibition curation, nonprofit gallery management, and writing. Aiming to reframe art from an even broader perspective, Umetsu began working with ceramics in 2019 and printmaking in 2022.
Auvray began as a painter, and subsequently broadened her creative scope to include fashion, sculpture, and ceramics. She began painting in her teens, and aside from incorporating elements of sculpture and ceramics, her style has remained notably consistent over the past twenty years. Auvray’s work is characterized by inventive assemblages of materials not typically paired, such as brooms of a standard type used around the world, wood and plastics salvaged on beaches, and objects encountered in the course of daily life, such as old toys, in which she finds beauty. These items are combined with ceramics to give rise to an intellectually stimulating and richly humorous world all her own, while drawing on sources such as picture-story shows and characters from the Commedia dell’Arte (Italian masked improvisational theater).
While the artists come from quite different backgrounds and usually operate in separate environments, their mutual interest in each other’s activities and works led to the organization of this exhibition. Ostensibly there may be little common ground between their works, but one might say that both artists’ creations emerge from liminal spaces between this world and others.
Despite speaking different languages, they share a breadth of artistic practice that produces a remarkable range of works, which we invite you to enjoy to the fullest.
Yoichi Umetsu
Born in Yamagata prefecture in 1982. Currently working between Sagamihara, Shigaraki, and at Kawalabo (Kawara Printmaking Laboratory). Representative of Parplume. Major solo exhibitions include the current ongoing special exhibition ‘Yoichi Umetsu: Crystal Palace’ at the National Museum of Art, Osaka (Osaka); ’Yoichi Umetsu | Pollinator’, The Watari-um Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), 2021; ‘Heisei Mood', Sokyo (Kyoto), 2021;「智・感・情・A」, ARATANIURANO (Tokyo), 2014. Major group exhibitions include :‘Does the Future Sleep here? Revisiting the museum’s response to contemporary art after 65 years’, The National Museum of Western Art (Tokyo), 2024; 'Yoichi Umetsu & Masumitsu Kanzaki Two Person Exhibition: Hige-san', Sokyo (Kyoto), 2023; 20th Anniversary of Mori Art Museum: ‘World Classroom: Contemporary Art Through School Subjects’, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), 2023; 'Kazunori Hamana and Yoichi Umetsu Two person exhibition: A Room with Six Floating Pots and Message Bottles', Sokyo Annex (Kyoto), 2021; '絵画の見かた reprise', √K Contemporary (Tokyo), 2021; 'Art of the Heisei Period: Bubbles/ Debris' Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art (Kyoto), 2021; ‘Yoichi Umestu curation exhibition: フル・フロンタル裸のサーキュレイター', Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery (Tokyo), 2020; 'Kazuhito Kawai Yoichi Umetsu Two person exhibition: Show Me【TSUTCHIKURE】with LOOP FEELING' Sokyo (Kyoto), 2020; 'Weavers of Worlds: A Century of flux in Japanese Modern/ Contemporary Art', Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2019;「恋せよ乙女！パープルーム大学と梅津庸一の構想画」The Watari-um Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), 2017. His current on-going group show ‘Floating Worlds: from Japonism to Contemporary art’ is at the Les Franciscaines (Deauville, France). Major collections include Museum of Conteporary Art Tokyo (Tokyo); The Mori Art Museum (Tokyo); Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Nagoya, Aichi); Yamagata Art Museum (Yamagata); Takahashi Ryutaro Collection (Tokyo) .
