Yokohama Triennale of Contemporary Art
Time Crevasse. International contemporary art show. Art shakes up our everyday perceptions. It gives us glimpses of the "abysses" we normally fail to notice, or perhaps pretend not to notice. It can horrify us, give us courage, console us, or provide us with what we need to face life. Artistic Director: Tsutomu Mizusawa.
Time Crevasse
Artistic Director: Tsutomu Mizusawa
Curators: Daniel Birnbaum, Hu Fang, Akiko Miyake, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Beatrix Ruf
As we entered a new millennium in the year 2001, the Yokohama Triennale, an
international triennial of contemporary art, was established as a forum for new
cultural production. The first Yokohama Triennale, YOKOHAMA 2001: Mega Wave—Towards
a New Synthesis, was curated by Shinji Kohmoto, Nobuo Nakamura, Fumio Nanjo, and
Akira Tatehata, and a total of 109 artists from 38 nations around the globe
participated. Following the success of the first Triennale, visual artist Tadashi
Kawamata realized the 2nd Yokohama Triennale in 2005, by adopting the unique concept
of “Work in Progress” under the title of “Art Circus (Jumping from the Ordinary).”
YOKOHAMA 2008, Yokohama’s third international triennale of contemporary art, will
take place in the autumn of 2008. The organizing committee for the 3rd Yokohama
Triennale is pleased to announce that Tsutomu Mizusawa, Chief Curator of the Museum
of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama, has been appointed as the Artistic Director.
Through this major art exhibition set in the cosmopolitan port city of Yokohama,
Mizusawa aims to reaffirm the boundless energy that art affords us. Together with
the international curatorial team, Mizusawa will organize the exhibition under the
overall theme “Time Crevasse.”
“Time Crevasse”
Art shakes up our everyday perceptions. It gives us glimpses of the“abysses” we
normally fail to notice, or perhaps pretend not to notice. It can horrify us, give
us courage, console us, or provide us with what we need to face life. Art arises
when we confront those abysses squarely and, by waiting attentively at the edges of
“time crevasses,” we can scrupulously register various forms of mutual
differentiation—individual or social differences; differences of nationality,
gender, generation, ethnicity, religion, and so on—including the particular
circumstances in which we ourselves are currently situated.
As the Yokohama Triennale prepares to unfold for the third time, it will offer an
opportunity for honest reevaluation and reaffirmation of art’s essential value and
power today and in the future. This forum for artistic expression will be maintained
not only for the sake of mere novelty to be consumed like information, but rather so
that, by confronting and accepting the myriad “crevasses” etched in their
histories, people can work toward achieving a better mutual understanding of a deep
and far-reaching kind.
Tsutomu Mizusawa
Born in Yokohama in 1952. Obtained an MA from Keio University (Japan) and joined the
Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, as curator in 1978. Curated many exhibitions,
including “MOBO, MOGA / Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Japanese Modern Art 1910–35”
(1998), “Isamu Wakabayashi”(1997), “Antony Gormley: Still Moving”(1996), and
“Katsura Funakoshi”(1993). He was appointed the Japanese commissioner of the “Asian
Art Biennale Bangladesh” in 1993 and 1997, and of the São Paulo Biennale in
2004.
Venues:
Central and Waterfront Sites in Yokohama ( Temporary Exhibition Hall for the Yokohama Triennale 2008 at the Shinko Pier, Red Brick Warehouse No.1, NYK Line Kaigan- dori Warehouse "BankART Studio NYK" )