Yokohama Triennale 2008

“TIME CREVASSE”
13 September - 30 November 2008
http://yokohamatriennale.jp

Artistic Director
Tsutomu Mizusawa (Chief Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama)

Curators
Daniel Birnbaum (Rector of the Städelschule Art Academy and Director of the Portikus, Frankfurt am Main)
Hu Fang (Artistic Director of the Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou)
Akiko Miyake (Program Director, Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) Kitakyushu)
Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, The Serpentine Gallery, London)
Beatrix Ruf (Director, Kunsthalle Zürich)

Yokohama Triennale, Japan’s largest international exhibition of contemporary art, is proud to make further announcements to present Yokohama Triennale 2008, its 3rd exhibition taking place from September 13th to November 30th.

Established in 2001, the Yokohama Triennale has become a forum for new cultural production in the contemporary art scene. Featuring works by some 70 artists from approximately 30 countries and set in the cosmopolitan port city of Yokohama, Japan, this year’s exhibition aims to reaffirm the boundless energy that art affords us. The exhibition will greatly take advantage of Yokohama’s social and geographical characteristics as well as the unique spaces of the venues to display an incredible array of works by various international artists, many of which incorporate performance-like elements that bring out the physicality of their creations. Symposiums, workshops, and various other opportunities for interaction and exchange will be held in conjunction with the exhibition, providing further points of encounter for people, art, and the host city.

Yokohama Triennale 2008 aims to tie in with the Sydney, Shanghai, Gwangju, and Singapore biennales, all of which will be held around the same time as the Yokohama Triennale. Under the banner Art Compass 2008, plans are under way for a worldwide publicity campaign and Grand Tour program encompassing all of these international exhibitions.

Says Director Tsutomu Mizusawa on the theme “Time Crevasse”:

“Art shakes up our everyday perceptions. It gives us glimpses of the ‘abyss’ we normally fail to notice, or perhaps pretend not to notice. It can horrify us, give us courage, console us, or provide us with what we need to face life. Art arises when we confront that abyss squarely and, by waiting attentively at the edges of ‘time crevasses,’ we scrupulously register various forms of mutual differentiation - individual or social differences, differences of nationality, gender, generation, ethnicity, religion, and so on-including the particular circumstances in which we ourselves are currently situated. Art has the power to dispel the temptation to let ourselves fall into such crevasses. It is also an act of bridging those gaps so that people can communicate and interact through them.”

As the Yokohama Triennale 2008 prepares to kick off this autumn, it will offer an opportunity for honest reevaluation and reaffirmation of art’s essential value and power today and in the future. This forum for artistic expression will be maintained not only for the sake of mere novelty to be consumed like information, but rather so that, by confronting and accepting the myriad ‘crevasses’ etched in their histories, people can work toward achieving a better mutual understanding of a deep and far-reaching kind.

Venues
Central and Waterfront Sites in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
- Shinko Pier Exhibition Hall
- Red Brick Warehouse No.1
- NYK Waterfront Warehouse (BankART Studio NYK)and others

Organizers- The Japan Foundation - City of Yokohama - NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) - Asahi Shimbun - The Organizing Committee for the Yokohama Triennale

Contact E-mail: PR@yokohamatriennale.jp

Yokohama Triennale Office
c/o The Japan Foundation Ark Mori Bldg 20F 1-12-32 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-6021, Japan

http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5309