Taro Masushio is participating in the group exhibition Cool Invitations 11, from January 18 through February 2, 2025. The exhibition at XYZ Collective, Tokyo, is curated by MISAKO&ROSEN.
Participating artists include: Maki Katayama, Yui Yaegashi, Ryohei Usui, Chan Cho Kiu Bunchi, COBRA, Futoshi Miyagi, Zon Ito, Ryoko Aoki, Hiroshi Sugito, Shunsuke Imai, Masaya Chiba, Hanna Hur, Trevor Shimizu, John Riepenhoff, Sara Caron, Will Rogan, Margaret Lee, Taro Masushio, Hikotaro Kanehira, MISAKO&ROSEN
The gallery is open Thursday – Saturday from 1pm – 6pm, as well as Sundays, 1pm – 5pm. It is closed on Mon, Tue, Wed and National holidays.
Xper.Xr will participating in a two-person exhibition with Delia Gonzalez at Hot Wheels Athens London, as part of Condo London, taking place 18 January through 15 February, 2025.
Empty Gallery is pleased to participate in the third edition of Dallas Invitational, from April 10–12 at the historic Mansion on Turtle Creek.
Organised by Olivia Shao, Legal Size is a group exhibition at Gandt, New York, from December 7 through February 9, 2025.
Participating artists include: Richard Aldrich, George Brecht, Lyndon Barrois Jr., Elise Duryee-browner, Curie Choi, Franz Erhard Walther, Peter Fischli, Jef Geys, Doris Guo, Raymond Hains, Bradley Kronz, Matthew Langan Peck, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Aki Sasamoto, Enzo Shalom, Mike Smith and Rosemarie Trockel.
Amid his exhibition at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, the Japanese bricolage photographer presents art as helping us sit with the discomfort of the unknown.
In the last essay he published before passing away on 23 October 2024, Gary Indiana wrote about photographs: “We all live at least one or two lives that we subtract from our biographies. Areas of un-revisited, unhealed pain or such monumental nothingness that they’re not worth remembering. Then, infrequently, some evidence turns up, often photographic evidence. You are seized, suddenly, by a grisly species of curiosity.”
Born in Japan and now living in New York, artist Taro Masushio’s exhibition “Pass” at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong is replete with photographic evidence, but contains little of facts and does not reward undue curiosity. Masushio’s reprinting of his father’s amateur travel photography on the cardboard of care packages shipped across the world from father to son conjures a haptic, material intimacy mediated by impersonal logistics networks. A series of sparing, high-contrast still-life photographs catalogues enigmatic objects sourced intuitively from his father’s belongings and the artist’s own collection – a book of Rimbaud’s poetry, a pair of male Ainu figurines, testosterone supplements, photo paper, a darkroom safe light. The effect is disruption of the impulse towards certainty in meaning-making, the recognizable objects utterly drained of their indexicality, despite their unambiguous familial, autobiographical, and sexual connotations.
“Just as he is uninterested in entrenching binaries of fact and fiction, resistance and capitulation, or authorship and appropriation, Taro Masushio is likewise wary of identitarian overdeterminations and the corollary imperative to verify and reveal any singular “truths” behind his photography. He sets himself the task of resisting the medium’s claims to the indisputable legibility of subjects in front of or behind its lens. His latest show at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong (all works 2024), juxtaposes two types of photography—UV prints on found cardboard and more traditional still lifes—to complicate the medium’s supposed technological purchase on truth and transparency. It highlights his proclivity for playful formal experimentation when faced with the camera’s potential for capture, which has often proven symptomatic of the colonial hunger for knowledge, order, and coherence. Through his shrewd sequencing of images, the artist seems to suggest that the medium of photography holds the capacity to conceal and equivocate, despite its presumed indexical fidelity to the “real.””
Empty Gallery is pleased to support Para Site’s 2024 Benefit Auction. The works by Doris Guo & Weili Wang and James T. Hong are available to view on 9/F of H Queen’s in Hong Kong through 17 November, the silent auction will continue through November 20, 10.30pm HKT.
In issue 141 of ArtAsiaPacific, deputy editor H.G. Masters covered James T. Hong’s Apologies, which was on view at Empty Gallery from June through August 2024.
At the Renaissance Society, Gork develops a new project for the Intermissions series in collaboration with performer, sound artist, and electronic musician Laetitia Sonami. Directly engaging with this unique setting, Gork introduces new physical elements into the empty gallery space, positions multiple sound sources, and experiments with the room’s unusual acoustics. For two days, Sonami and Gork mobilize and shape the sound within this environment across various listening zones. Visitors are free to come and go during the durational performance.
Curated by Karsten Lund with Michael Harrison
Special thanks to Meyer Sound, Berkeley, CA.
On the weekend of November 8-9, Winsome Wong will present ‘Love Song: the bittersweet crumbs of having them at home’ in collaboration with Vunkwan Tam and Annisa Cheung, at Tai Kwun’s HICCUP, a festival of body and sound co-presented by Tai Kwun Contemporary, Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong (Sound Forms), and Per.Platform.
For the full schedule, see the link below.
Empty Gallery榮幸呈獻東京藝術家杉原玲那(Reina Sugihara)的首次個展《呼吸》(Respirare)。杉原的畫作瀰漫著神秘的氛圍,其創作過程漫長而儀式化,往往歷經數月甚至數年的反覆追溯、疊加和抹除。她的創作始於一件憑直覺選中的物件,而這些物件因其本質的模糊與未知,成為探索現象學的切入點。在藝術家個人意識的介入下,這些物件轉化為形影朦朧的顏料,作品中若隱若現的輪廓,宛如微風吹拂下輕顫的樹葉,偶然有機的特質暗示了一種自我維持的現實。雖然繪畫媒介常被視為過時,杉原的畫作卻巧妙地呼應了多種歷史傳統,例如超現實主義的自動創作、戰後日本與歐洲繪畫的肉體傾向,以及宗教藝術的沉思傳統,卻又悄然自成一格。
乍看之下,將杉原的作品歸類爲風景畫似乎並不恰當。然而,她的畫作用色粗獷而奔放,散發出鐵鏽、焦油和泥土的質感,雖然方式陌生,卻確實喚起對大地的感受,如硫磺般翻滾的色彩、乳白顏料的透明漩渦、樹脂狀的結晶,以及光線折射下閃亮的礦物霧氣。這些作品與地質現象或地貌頗有相似之處,但它們是否真的能被視為風景畫?倘若古典風景畫的傳統是建基於以自主主體(或非肉體的自我)為描繪的參照,那麼杉原的畫作又植根於何處?
正當戶外寫生重新流行之際,杉原的創作卻走向了截然相反的方向。她從創作重心從陽光充沛的遼闊空間轉向昏暗的內景,從豐盈的視覺走向遲疑的氛圍——這種轉變似乎刻意指向回歸內省的過程。她的創作不僅把觸覺置於首位,同時透過描繪外在世界,強調一種主動的棲居態度或張力十足的共存關係。這些作品如同身心的快拍,以微小的方式捕捉零星的印象,記錄下異質時間的沉積,展現出身體感知和認知的混亂本質。這些「令人警覺的可塑性流」逐漸累積為稠密的痕跡,彷彿向日葵效應般,抵抗自我的否定,朝向觀者的光芒生長。過去的影像自我消除,並被吸收至畫作土壤(即支撐藝術表現的物質)的深淵,隱喻著大地或「土壤」的無序性,以及混亂所蘊涵的潛在生產力。被物質填滿的空間既包含一切又什麼都沒有,其本質的物質豐富性同時空虛又充實。
某些靈修者將呼吸比作門的搖擺,把身體/自我視為單單一個外殼——內在和外在之間的活躍支點。杉原的畫作不是讓我們接觸到現象的背面,而是進入現象之間的縫隙。這些畫作之所以努力逃離語言的支配,並非為了再現內部狀態,而是成為記載內部過程的證據,這些過程永遠無法被完全同化。透過這樣的方式,杉原揭示了我們如何感知世界,穿越微小的邊界,探索主客之間曖昧而豐富的虛空。她的作品是孤獨的紀錄,也是時空質量的紀錄,在遠離日常經驗的同時,卻又接近其本質——作為我們所經歷一切的根源。
正如西田幾太郎所言:「內在是徹底的外在,外在是徹底的內在,從內到外,從外到內,形式意味著被形成,世界形成自身。」 杉原的畫作亦是如此。它們的目標並非再現事物或激發特定的情感,而是作為內在探索的深刻紀錄。從另一個角度來看,這種探索也許無非是生活本身。