STANDING PINE

STANDING PINE Tokyo is pleased to present Youki Hirakawa’s solo exhibition entitled “Sorry We're Closed.” from Saturday 20th January to Saturday 17th February. Youki Hirakawa was born in Aichi in 1983 and stayed in Germany after completing his master’s degree until 2016. He currently lives and works in Aichi prefecture and his works have been exhibited in many international museums and galleries so far. By unravelling history and structure of things and manipulating the relationship between them, he has presented works with various media including film, three-dimensional works, installation and so on. His latest works raise an issue to the art system itself with a sense of humour by modifying everyday objects and ready-made items.

The exhibition title “Sorry We're Closed.”, is taken from the situation in which many restaurants, theatres, museums and airports had to be closed temporarily due to the Corona disaster. The oppressive situation brought the artist, who had travelled frequently to and from abroad so far, a lot of time of introspection as it did to the others.

In this exhibition, the artist presents new works with a sense of humour, which represent a time that seems to have come to a standstill after the long Corona disaster and a situation in which people were forced to be trapped in the “here and now”, but their bodies were nonetheless certainly ageing. After all the travel restrictions were finally lifted, the artist visited countries outside the East Asia, however, what he witnessed was unfortunately a completely different world from the one before the Corona disaster.

The division of people caused by the pandemic, the rewritten world map, the anguish, longing, regulations and complexes that one artist has faced in this context, are intricately connected to a new body of work.

We look forward to your arrival.

Date: Saturday 20th January – Saturday 17th February
Hours: 12:00 - 18:00 (From Tuesday to Saturday)
Closed on Sunday, Monday and National holidays
Opening reception: Saturday 27th January, 17:00 – 19:00

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