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7/11/2013

Aiko Tezuka

Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin

Galerie Michael Janssen Berlin is proud to present its first solo show with Japanese artist Aiko Tezuka. 2013 her works were shown in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in an exhibition entitled Ghost - Suspended Organs.

"Aiko's work does not deal with diagrams; her practice is based in fabrics. Fabrics are usually directed towards an end-product such as clothes or furnishings. Therefore they function to add up to something else. A fabric rarely refers to itself simply as a fabric; moreover it usually refers to something more complex, so it is an element which is used for something.
Aiko, however, has a reverse view of fabrics. She takes the fabric and dissects it according to its own principles - the threads. Like a cartographer, she shows the inner structures of things. The chosen fabric can be considered a readymade, which she does not take to be a static entity, but rather attends to it to visualise and dissect it into constituent parts.

The different types of fabric that she uses are not diligently manufactured or the outcome of certain precise processes. Mostly, they are fabrics that are either objects of utility or simple mainstream souvenirs, such as the Gobelinesque views of Canale Grande in Venice and fabrics that one in Germany would deridingly name: 'Gelsenkirchener Barock'.
Aiko unravels threads or extracts certain coloured threads from the fabric, so that the designs or the woven motifs fade out into a blurred image of what they originally depicted. The outcome of the unravelling process shows something that is usually invisible, since the threads only gain in importance once they come together, to constitute fabric with its different motifs or images.

By unravelling the thread by hand, Aiko applies an arduous and painstaking method that is far from the actual process of the industrial production from which the fabric originated. The discrepancy between Aiko's work with her hands, and the machine-produced fabric is taken one step further: in some of her works she reconnects the threads again by re-using them for her own stitching. This is a very poetic transformation in a way, to re-engage material, which evolved originally from an industrial work and to make a new piece of work from it.

[...] By re-using fabrics, Aiko engages with the meaning of fabric itself, its cultural heritage, its designs, the origin of motifs and the globalised market of industrial productions.

Over time, intercultural transfer has led to the exchange of motifs, so that no design pattern of fabric is original in terms of a country of origin. This is even more pronounced in times when Western culture seems to be viewed as being state-of-the-art. Therefore the fabric that Aiko uses could be seen to symbolise the constituent parts of where a traditional motif or a design comes from and the act of unravelling those bonds as an attempt to show the compositions that our cultures consist of in its fragments.

Returning to the maps and schemes, one cannot deny that the underside of an embroidery appears very much like a map or a scheme. Similarly, making invisible structures visible are functions that these types of plans also have. While the deconstruction of its intended appearance is in one way a careless or destructive act, the thoughtful unravelling and re-enaging of the threads in Aiko's work could not be more mindful."

Christina Lehnert, Assistant Curator, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, excerpt from "The inner scheme of fabric"

"Through retroaction, the rediscovered white threads reveal the hidden structure of the fabric in a method similar to that employed in some of the works by Giuseppe Penone. This gives the piece a new image as if it were a living organism that is continuously transforming itself.
It also exudes an atmospheric gloom where we may sense something like a human figure. Perhaps this can be likened to a physical collapse of a painting" [...]

Chief Curator, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan

The texts were published in the catalogue "Rewoven-Overflow" at occasion of the exhibition "Ghost - Suspended Organs" at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, January 17 - February 10, 2013, Berlin

Aiko Tezuka: b. 1976 in Tokyo, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo.
Solo Exhibitions (selection): 2013: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. 2011: Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum, Kyoto, Japan. KENJI TAKI Gallery, Nagoya and Tokyo, Japan; Group Exhibitions (selection): 2012: Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. @KCUA gallery, Kyoto Art University of Arts, Kyoto, Japan. 2010: Royal College of Art, Sculpture, London, UK. Bunkamura The Museum, Tokyo, Japan. 2009: Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea.

For further information please contact: Fabio Pink, f.pink@galeriemichaeljanssen.de
Tel: +49 30 259 272 50, Fax: +49 30 259 272 518

Opening Friday, November 8, 6 - 9 p.m.

Galerie Michael Janssen
Potsdamer Str. 63 - D-10785 Berlin
Tue - Sat 11 am - 6 pm

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