Yuken Teruya
dal 8/9/2005 al 9/10/2005
Segnalato da
8/9/2005
Yuken Teruya
Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York
Forest Inc. is a sculptural installation made of paper bags from fast food chains, commercial shopping bags and discarded toilet paper rolls. The artist continues his exploration of our global throwaway culture. His sculptures trace the link from nature to consumerism by returning discarded trees back to the forest.
Forest Inc.
Josee Bienvenu Gallery is pleased to present Forest Inc., an exhibition
by Yuken Teruya. Born in Okinawa, Japan in 1973, Yuken Teruya received
his MFA from the school of Visual Arts, New York in 2001. His work is
currently included in Greater New York 2005 at P.S.1 Contemporary art
Center and will be shown this fall at the Yokohama International
Triennial. Recent exhibitions include the Kunstwerein Wiesbaden in
Germany; The Fuchu Biennale at the Fuchu Art Museum in Tokyo as well as
various gallery exhibitions in the US, Europe and Japan.
Forest Inc. is a sculptural installation made of paper bags from fast
food chains, commercial shopping bags and discarded toilet paper rolls.
Yuken Teruya continues his exploration of our global throwaway culture.
His sculptures trace the link from nature to consumerism by returning
discarded trees back to the forest: in each paper bag the shape of a
tree is created without adding or removing anything, just by cutting out
and folding the paper from the bag itself.
In this new project, the accent is not so much on portraying individual
existing trees. The challenge is here to question the notion of the
“Forest of global corporations†that has become our new natural
environment. “For the first couple of years, I was more interested in
making trees from plain brown or white bags, then I started
incorporating the logo into the tree itself and now I am fascinated by
the meanings interconnections between the different brands†(Yuken
Teruya). The sculptures are organized in specific groups to reveal
meaningful relationships, articulating and deconstructing the semiotics
of global brands.
The sculptures in the exhibition map specific “family trees†of global
corporations “I was interested in the corporations who start planting,
invading and spreading by developing more and more branches .as well as
by the ones who flourish as an ever growing entity†The largest group
represented in the exhibition is LVMH. Through 11 selected brand bags
from the 50 that the company comprises, the LVMH group leisurely spreads
on an entire wall of sumptuous gift bags, both flattering and
questioning our fascination with shopping and luxury brands. McDonalds
Family brings together McDonalds bags of assorted formats from different
countries. Harboring its hidden forest of uniquely carved trees, the
installation turns the infamous symbol of excess into an elegy. Other
groups include Gap Inc.; Tiffany & Co; Hermes and Three Auctioneers.
Yuken Teruya’s goes on with another wall installation titled Forest Inc.
composed of an intricate network of cut out discarded toilet paper rolls.
Without adding or removing anything, Yuken Teruya creates shadow boxes
in which the shape of one or of multiple trees is cut out from the paper
bag itself. Light filters down through the holes of the ‘roof’ of each
bag to illuminate the tree within each interior landscape. The he
sculptures.
Opening: Friday September 9, from 6 to 8pm
Josee Bienvenu Gallery
529 West 20th Street - New York