STANDING PINE

STANDING PINE Tokyo is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Kenji Sugiyama entitled “Gaze into the Distance” from Saturday 2nd March to Saturday 30th March. Sugiyama was born in 1962 in Aichi and has been working on the series called ‘I.I.M. Institute of Intimate Museums’ since 1998. Imaginary museums and libraries precisely created by using visual tricks have been attracting people in the world. In his works, the viewers’ eyes wander into the space, changing perspective, leading them to the inner world of the artist. This exhibition features his new works entitled “Gaze into the Distance”, which will be the new development of his ongoing series started from the artist’s personal museums to libraries of the artist’s memory.

The new work “Gaze into the Distance” is inspired by an old-fashioned beautiful theatre. The eye itself, the act of peeping, personal memory and experience, and the fact that people see different things due to their own visual functions. These are the consistent theme in his works, and they are also keys to understand his view of the world. This work is created based on the image of “a person who blinks”. There are a lot of drop curtains around the theatre. They remind the viewers of eyelashes around an eye and the work itself looks like one big eye. The audience who can look at the work is only one person and the person gazes into the distant stage. The viewers can see Sugiyama’s previous works on the stage behind, but they also can project their own memories to the screen if they prefer. Although the focal distance between the viewers and the works was close in most of his previous works, Sugiyama set out on a new structure that viewers will look into the distant stage.

The space forms a structure like Russian dolls and it invites viewers inside the theatre. The works connect the memories and imagination of the artist with viewers and make them feel integrated as a part of the artwork. The human’s life might be ephemeral just like in the blink of an eye. That is why memories play an important role for human. In this exhibition, the gallery space itself becomes a mysterious labyrinth constituted of memories of the artist and viewers. Sugiyama will invite viewers to his exquisite and low-technology, old and new world onsite built on his enormous investment of time, which would be hard to convey only in pictures.

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