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

This will be the first time an outdoor sculpture exhibition has been held in the Meiji Jingu shrine forest. Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition :20/3/2020 ~13/12/020 .

Meiji JinguMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Tenku-Kaikatsu means "expanding into a clear, never-ending sky"

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.

Kohei NAWA by Kohei NAWAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Kohei Nawa

Artist/Director of SANDWICH Inc./Professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design

Born in 1975. Currently based in Kyoto. He graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts with a Ph.D. in Fine Art Sculpture in 2003. He establishes “SANDWICH,” a creative platform for production in 2009. He explores the potentiality of sculpture, working with beads, polyurethane foam, silicone oil, and a wide range of other technologies and materials, through his original concept “PixCell.” Nawa's recent projects extend this exploration to architecture and performance, to create both space and art. In 2018, he exhibited his monumental sculpture “Throne” in Musée du Louvre, France, while “VESSEL” - a dance creation developed with French-Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet, is on world tour since 2015.

White Deer (Meiji Jingu) (2020) by Kohei NawaMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

White Deer (Meiji Jingu)

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.

White Deer (Meiji Jingu) (2020) by Kohei NawaMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

White Deer(Meiji Jingu) (2020) by Kohei NAWAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Tomokazu MATSUYAMA by Tomokazu MATSUYAMAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Tomokazu Matsuyama

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.

Wheels of Fortune (2020) by Tomokazu MATSUYAMAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Wheels of Fortune

Wheels of Fortune is a 15ft monumental sculpture in the form of deer antlers with an intricately decorated car-like wheel, nestled among the trees of the Meiji Jingu Forest. Mirror finish and the use of antler reference the Shinto philosophy that mirrors reflect all things in universe, and deers are messenger to the gods. Its fluid shape contrasts with the industrial feel of its material, creating a duality that expresses both the here-and-now of our contemporary era and the universality of ancient times.

Wheels of Fortune (2020) by Tomokazu MatsuyamaMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Wheels of Fortune (2020) by Tomokazu MATSUYAMAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Misa Funai by Misa FunaiMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Misa Funai

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.

Paradise/Boundary –SINME- (2020) by Misa FUNAIMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Paradise/Boundary –SINME-

This work uses the horse as its motif, drawing inspiration from the custom of offering sacred horses to a shrine in the form of ema (“horse picture”) votive pictures, and Emperor Meiji’s beloved imperial horse, Kinkazan-gou. Japan was modernized in the Meiji era. At that time the basis of our modern society was formed and Japanese painting changed dramatically as well with the introduction of western culture. Now, a hundred years later, the forest has grown, and the city has developed from Edo to Tokyo. Thinking back over that history, my wish is that the appearance of an imaginary horse now in the forest will help us think about the next 100 years to come.

Paradise/Boundary –SINME- (2020) by Misa FUNAIMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Paradise/Boundary-SHINME (2020) by Misa FUNAIMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

《Paradise/Boundary-SHINME》with snow.

Atsuhiko Misawa by Atsuhiko MISAWAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Atsuhiko Misawa

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.

Animal 2012-01B (2012/2019) by Atsuhiko MisawaMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Animal 2012-01B

When we talk of “animals”, there are actually many separate notions that are mixed together in our minds. We might mean wild beasts, or the fictional characters in a story, and so on. Misawa’s sculptures appear to be both none of those and all of them at the same time, as if they directly encompass our entire concept of “animal”.

Animal 2012-01B (2012/2019) by Atsuhiko MISAWAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Animal2012-01B (2012/2019) by Atsuhiko MISAWAMeiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art

Credits: Story

Meiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Art
Centennial Celebration of The Establishment of Meiji Jingu

Reference Page:
Meiji Jingu
Meiji Jingu Forest - Festival of Artn

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions (listed below) who have supplied the content.
Explore more
Related theme
International Museum Day 2020
From iconic art to cutting-edge fashion, get a better appreciation and understanding of culture from around the world
View theme
Home
Discover
Play
Nearby
Favourites