Get to Know the Artists in the Tenku-Kaikatsu Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition

The five contemporary artists who will show their works have visited the shrine many times in preparation, confirmed the positioning of their sculptures, learned of the history and culture of the shrine, and incorporated the awe and respect they have gained there into their work. The sculptures in the woods stand quietly strong in concert with the trees around them. We hope you will enjoy the chance to view these new artworks in the surrounding of the sacred forests.

The deer has a long history of being a symbol of a sacred messenger or a sacred beast in Shinto religions, along with other animist beliefs. In recent years, the deer population in Japan has been increasing, and the wild deer that come and go through villages and towns have been given the name “Lost Deer”. “White Deer” is made by a 3D scan of a taxidermy deer that was found on the internet. This artwork was a part of the Reborn-Art Festival in Ishininomiyaki, Miyagi Prefecture, where the deer stood on the beach at Oginohama on the Oshika Peninsula. This region symbolizes a wish for recovery. Now, as if called on by the Gods, "White Deer" is situated in the Meiji Jingu Forest and welcomes visitors to the centennial celebrations.

Tomokazu Matsuyama was born in Japan, 1976 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his MFA in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute, NewYork. Matsuyama’s work responds to his own bi-cultural experience of growing up between Japan and America by bringing together aspects of both Eastern and Western aesthetic systems. His practice repositions traditional icons within a broader global context in order to create a distinctive style that resists cultural categorization and embodies what the artist refers to as the “struggle of reckoning the familiar local with the familiar global.” By raising questions of national and individual identity through the formal qualities and subject matter of his paintings, Matsuyama examines the “natural chaos” of our social environments and challenges viewers to confront their own conceptions of cultural homogeneity.

Born in Kyoto in 1974. Graduated from University of Tsukuba with M.F.A in Japanese Painting in 2001. Under the theme of "two-dimensional" and "three-dimensional" boundaries, she creates drawings and installations using mirrors and shaped canvases. Thinking about painting as material and immaterial images, it expands the possibilities of painting beyond planes and solids. In recent years, a series of “paradise” drawn with a mirror, in which viewers enter the work and develop a work where past, present, imagination and reality intersect. VOCA2010 The Vision of Contemporary Art ” The Ueno Royal Museum in 2009. Solo exhibition “Paradise/Bounrary :where we were once “Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Aomori in 2017, etc.

Misawa was born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1961. He got M.F.A. in Sculpture fromTokyo University of the Arts in 1989. In 2000, he started to make the seriesof wooden sculpture of animals called "Animals". From the same year, he hasbeen held his exhibitions at Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo. In 2001, he receivedthe 20th Hirakushi Denchu Prize. 2007–08, his exhibition tours held at 5museums, starting with the Hiratsuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa. Since then,many solo exhibitions have been held at museums throughout Japan. In recentyears, his exhibitions have held at the Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo in 2017,Yokosuka Museum of Art, Kanagawa and Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art &Design in 2018. In 2019, he received the 41st Nakahara Teijiro Prize. He iscurrently a professor of Musashino Art University and lives in Kanagawa.