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Artist Focus #05 Mitake Isa: Shades/Shapes
The Museum of Art, Kochi
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Artists
Isa Mitake
The fifth installment in the ARTIST FOCUS series is an exhibition of works by Mitake Isa, an artist from Kochi City. Mitake has been translating her interest in human perception – vision in particular – and the mystery of material existence, into artworks in the shapes of sculptures, installations and videos, with great care and intelligence.
The things she creates are charged with a sense of restraint that evokes tools for inspection or experimentation, which is underpinned by Mitake’s general stance of “not creating common things and shapes.” Midway through her career, she started making imagery with the help of digital cameras and computers, which proved to be a perfect medium for her endeavors, considering its “non-material” quality. “ウツス (utsusu)” in the Japanese title of this exhibition, is a verb that can be written in various ways, using Chinese (kanji) characters that can mean “to reproduce,” “to project,” or generally “to transfer (A to B).” Here it is not limited to any one of these meanings, and is thus written in (as such) meaningless katakana letters. A similar English verb would be “to cast,” either as in “to cast into shape” or as in “to cast a shadow (or shade).” The English title was chosen to describe the artist’s practice as casting both “shapes” and “shades” – creating imagery that ranges from landscapes seen through an optical device, and fossils capturing the age-old shapes of plants, to sceneries as they tend to appear in our dreams.
This first ever solo exhibition in her hometown showcases the energetic Kansai-based artist’s activities to date, with a special focus on recent works. We hope you enjoy especially also the videos that represent Mitake’s novel attempt to interweave images from the Kochi region.
The things she creates are charged with a sense of restraint that evokes tools for inspection or experimentation, which is underpinned by Mitake’s general stance of “not creating common things and shapes.” Midway through her career, she started making imagery with the help of digital cameras and computers, which proved to be a perfect medium for her endeavors, considering its “non-material” quality. “ウツス (utsusu)” in the Japanese title of this exhibition, is a verb that can be written in various ways, using Chinese (kanji) characters that can mean “to reproduce,” “to project,” or generally “to transfer (A to B).” Here it is not limited to any one of these meanings, and is thus written in (as such) meaningless katakana letters. A similar English verb would be “to cast,” either as in “to cast into shape” or as in “to cast a shadow (or shade).” The English title was chosen to describe the artist’s practice as casting both “shapes” and “shades” – creating imagery that ranges from landscapes seen through an optical device, and fossils capturing the age-old shapes of plants, to sceneries as they tend to appear in our dreams.
This first ever solo exhibition in her hometown showcases the energetic Kansai-based artist’s activities to date, with a special focus on recent works. We hope you enjoy especially also the videos that represent Mitake’s novel attempt to interweave images from the Kochi region.
Schedule | Dec 17 (Tue) 2024-Feb 21 (Fri) 2025 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Adults ¥370, University Students ¥260, High School Students and Under free. | ||||
| Website | https://moak-jp.translate.goog/en/event/exhibitions/artistfocus_05.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ja | ||||
| Venue | The Museum of Art, Kochi https://moak.jp/en/ | ||||
| Location | 353-2 Takasu, Kochi-shi, Kochi 781-8123 | ||||
| Access | 9 minute walk from Kenritsu Bijutsukan-dori Station on the Tosaden Gomen line, 10 minutes by taxi from the South exit of Kochi Station on the JR Dosan line. | ||||
| Phone | 088-866-8000 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it  |
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