nca | nichido contemporary art

Place: nca | nichido contemporary art
Date: Friday 23rd June – Saturday 29th July
Gallery hours: Tue – Sat 11:00 – 19:00 (Closed on Sunday, Monday and National holidays)
Opening Reception: Friday 23rd June 18:00 – 20:00
*Gallery talk: Daisuke Miyatsu x Chieko Hasegawa (galerie nichido Vice President) Friday 23rd June 19:00 ~

Participating Artists: Kazuya Sakamoto | Kentaro Hiroki | Lucas Grogan | Nobuyoshi Araki | Ryuta Iida | Syaiful Garibaldi | Tawan Wattuya | Moïse Kisling | Utamaro Kitagawa

nca | nichido contemporary art is pleased to present the group show “Identity XIII- curated by Daisuke Miyatsu -”.
Since the fourth edition of this annual exhibition, we started to invite curators and investigate the theme of “identity” embracing their perspective. The exhibition welcomes for its 13th edition Daisuke Miyatsu, art collector and professor at the Yokohama College of Art and Design, as guest curator. Well known in Japan as “salary man collector”, his story has widely spread abroad, too. This is the first exhibition he organizes since he joined the academic field, leaving his job after 30 years in March 2017.

Je t'aime... moi non plus – A love journey through art -

In recent years, the word “curation” has become easily overused and emptied of its meaning. For those who deeply love contemporary art, such a tendency is extremely condemnable. I am a collector, however, by no means I can consider myself a curator. This is why when finding myself planning the group show “Identity XIII”, I thought I would take on at best the responsibility that comes along with such a task holding on to my pride as a collector. Because being a collector is my identity, my reison d’etre. Thus, in line with this perspective, this exhibition focuses on new works by artists featuring in my collection, with one exception especially added as a tribute to galerie nichido.

Crazy for painting is the title of the exhibition curated by my dear friend, and main curator of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT), Kenjiro Hosaka. With love as the key, Hosaka investigated the possibilities of Marcel Duchamp’s idea, expressed through his work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, alternatively called love machine, “to further hold on to paintings, while gradually escaping from optical works”. Eventually, he landed to the theme of the exhibition that consisted of the idea that defines the painting’s goal as “that entity worth of receiving love and affection, whether it is one’s own feelings, someone else’s, or the community’s”. Painting as love. What a beautiful way to put it indeed. However, after all for me it may be more about the artworks. Artworks as love. For a collector, an artwork is exactly that entity worth receiving love and affection. However, just as for an unrequited love, controversial are the feelings when, for some reason, we are not able to get the piece we longed for. A strong desire or a feeling of attachment, and yet without going as far as talking about hateful feelings, we find ourselves carrying on ambivalent emotions.

“Je t’aime ... moi mon plus” is the most representative song of the outstandingly dandy French artist Serge Gainsbourg. The English translation of the title is “I love you .... me neither”. Gainsbourg released two original duet versions, one performed with actress Brigitte Bardot (1967), and one with Jane Birkin (1969), but the song has been remade as a solo version, too. These are the words I borrowed for this exhibition’s title: they reflect my feelings, otherwise difficult to put into words, and match with the exhibition I planned for this group show. Also, this exhibition is about paintings (including a few pictures and relief images) as a homage to Mr. Hosaka who took on many of my suggestions, and, with a bit of malice, it shows some part of the lyrics’ contents.

Well then, let’s embark together on this profound journey we call love.

Daisuke Miyatsu

*1: “Crazy for Painting” gallery αM , April 4th 2012 – March 23rd 2013
*2: “Painting after Duchamp: Love and Weakness” Kenjiro Hosaka “Crazy for Painting” Exhibition Catalogue, Musashino Art University, pp.13-17
*3: “Crazy for Painting” Kenjiro Hosaka “Crazy for Painting” Exhibition Catalogue, Musashino Art University, pp. P10

Daisuke Miyatsu
Born in 1963. Art collector, professor at the Yokohoama College of Art and Design, guest professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design. The collection of contemporary artworks he accumulated as a simple company employee ("salaryman"), as well as his house which he built with the contribution of various artists, have extensively been covered by the Japanese and international press, and displayed in exhibitions in museums, such as the Daelim Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. In 2011 July-September, a great exhibition of his collection was organized at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Taiwan. Member of the “Review Commission for the Diffusion Abroad of Contemporary Art” for the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affair, and judge of “WONDER SEEDS” (Tokyo Wonder Site) from 2010 to 14, Miyatsu is the author of books such as “Gendai Art Keizaigaku” (Contemporary Art Economics), and “Gendai Art wo KaÔ!” (Let's buy contemporary art!), published in Japanese as part of the Shueisha Shinsho Collection, (available in traditional Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean - Uni Books).

Kindly supported by: Taka Ishii Gallery | ROH Projects | Yavuz Gallery | Yutaka Kikutake Gallery | Uragami Sokyu-do | galerie nichido