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project
Yutaka Sone & Rirkrit Tiravanija
17 times Rirkrit Tiravanija Smile, 2022
リクリット・ティラヴァーニャの17の笑顔
01 copy

published on the occasion of the exhibition
DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY
Okayama Art Summit 2022
curated by Rirkrit Tiravanija

edited by Tommy Simoens
photography by Gert Robijns, Guci, Caroline van Dooren

project
Gert Robijns, Yutaka Sone and Rirkrit Tiravanija
DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY
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30 September (Friday) to 27 November (Sunday), 2022 [51 days]

Held in Okayama City once every three years, the Okayama Art Summit is an international exhibition of contemporary art. With Rirkrit Tiravanija taking the reins as artistic director, the Okayama Art Summit 2022 brings the artistic touch to various historical and cultural sites near Okayama Castle and Okayama Korakuen Garden for two months from 30 September to 27 November, 2022.

project
YUTAKA SONE
BIRTHDAY PARTY
Projects
In 1997, the installation Birthday Party by Yutaka Sone was exhibited for the first time at the fourth Sculpture Projects Münster exhibition in Germany, and made Sone world-renowned. In the video, Sone celebrates his own birthday every day with a variety of people that he encounters in the city of Munster. He recorded people singing birthday songs and him blowing out the candles on the cake. He then played the edited 22-minute video on a monitor placed in the underground passageway in front of Münster’s Central Station. Daring to show a private video in a public place, the exhibit challenged the traditional relationship between the individual and society. Sculpture Projects in Münster is an international sculpture exhibition, but the artist told project director Kasper König that to him video works are sculptures. The artist wanted to make a ’sculpture’ of a humble personal history, of the joyful memory that everyone has of celebrating his birth into this world—to make a ’sculpture‘ of shapeless memory and light. This presents a new perspective on society and public places, a new way of seeing things, an approach that is a consistent theme in Sone’s work. Three days before the opening of this exhibition —on the occasion of the artists‘ birthday—a birthday party was held at the gallery, as the latest addition to the artists’ ungoing sculpture project.
project
YUTAKA SONE
DOUBLE SIX SAN JUAN
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Part of the exhibition: Give and Give, BIENALSUR 2021, San Juan, Argentina
Japanese artist Yutaka Sone will throw two dice measuring 200 x 200 centimeters each from the ceiling of the Franklin Rawson Museum of Fine Arts. The action, entitled “Double Six San Juan”, previously carried out in other parts of the world, proposes a humorous reflection on chance and what it represents in our daily lives. At the same time, it sheds light on the difficulty of accepting the loss of control in a highly technical society and the margin of loss and profit implicit in each movement. Yutaka Sone’s works are, among other places, at the Los Angeles and Tokyo Museums of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
 
project
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
NO BREAD NO ASHES
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Part of the exhibition: Give and Give, BIENALSUR 2021, San Juan, Argentina

Tiravanija is an Argentine-born Thai artist who lives between New York, Berlin and Chiang Mai and his work carries the tension of his nomadic life by combining different cultural contexts. Rather than insisting on a specific reality or truth, his work creates open contexts in which people reach their own conclusions. The strength of his work lies precisely in this ephemeral and elusive quality that escapes definitions: Tiravanija uses everyday materials in new settings to give the viewer a perspective, both banal and profound, on the fleeting nature of life.
 
publication
GERT ROBIJNS
RE SET
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This new publication, edited by Tommy Simoens, with contributions from Etienne van den Bergh and Sam Steverlynck, provides an overview of a decade of spatial art based on Robijns’ ‘Reset’ concept. Published by LUDION.

Artist Gert Robijns (Sint Truiden, 1972) has been working for ten years on the ‘Reset’ idea, which focuses on recreating and revaluing the landscape. In 2010, he created his first work, Het Dorp, which can be seen as the starting point of his Reset practice. Robijns made a copy of his native village of Gotem, on a scale of 75/100, in white wood and metal, including church and vicarage. He erected the construction on the old military airport at Brustem, half an hour’s bike ride from his native village. The “Reset” idea never left him and continues to this day in his work, with projects such as Reset Home (the transformation of his grandparents’ house in Borgloon into a house for art), Reset Plein Air (a plan for a work of art that integrates into the landscape of Haspengouw), Reset Charbon (a reflection on Limburg’s mining past) and, more recently, the travelling project Reset Mobile.

publication
THE QUAY BROTHERS
THE BLACK DRAWINGS 1974—1977
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Written and edited by Edwin Carels published by Tommy Simoens, Antwerp and Ludion

In the mid-Seventies the influential stop-motion animators, Stephen and Timothy Quay, embarked on a series of dark graphite drawings, conceived as imaginary film posters. They kept their first autonomous art project hidden for decades, allowing only a few glimpses to transpire in some of their animation classics such as Nuctura Artificialia and Street of Crocodiles. In hindsight, the Black Drawings can be considered as a blueprint for their future work.

Yutaka Sone at Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing
YUTAKA SONE
OBSIDIAN
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The exhibition Yutaka Sone: OBSIDIAN, is the artists first institutional solo exhibition in China, held at Sifang Art Museum Nanjing. The Exhibition features key works by the artist made between 2000 and 2017, as well as newly commissioned works/installations, collaborations, and performance. The exhibition will offer an unprecedented view of how the various strands in Sone’s practice interrelate and attest to the ubiquitous energy of his artistic spirit.

Tommy Simoens at Carlos/Ishikawa, Londen
YUTAKA SONE
CONDO 2017
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CONDO is a collaboration between 36 galleries with an international scope in 15 various locations in London. The project offers an alternative model to the art fair and gives emerging artists a platform. Carlos/Ishikawa host Tommy Simoens and ShanghART. Oscar Murillo is curating the show presenting “Aztec Light” and other pieces by Yutaka Sone, Ouyang Chun and Murillo himself.

Opening party at ENTOURAGE
EDUARDO SARABIA 
SALON ALEMAN
6.09 – 6.09.2018
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Thursday September 6, 9 PM
Opening Party: Salon Aleman @ café Entourage
following the reception at the gallery

Eduardo Sarabia and Tommy Simoens are looking forward to see you at the party in honour of the artist at ENTOURAGE Waalsekaai 33, 2000 Antwerp, next-door of the gallery. Salon Aleman opening night’s dj’s are Peter Adjaye aka AJ Kwame and DAOUD by Charlotte De Cock. 
Sarabia’s ongoing party project Salon Aleman first premiered in Berlin, in the basement of unitednationsplaza, and has since traveled to venues in cities all over the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the New Museum in New York, the 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky and Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing as part of the exhibition Yutaka Sone: Obsidian.
project
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
UNTITLED, 2017 (OIL DRUM STAGE)
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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 2017 (Oil Drum Stage) was made for the occasion of the exhibition Yutaka Sone: Obsidian at Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing. From the outset, Rirkrit Tiravanija has always been interested in countercultures that have nourished his work. Punk, the 1970s iconic anti-establishment movement, was a response to the era’s various artistic, economic, and social crisis. It re ects a total rejection of conventional circuits and is notable for allowing anyone and everyone to come on stage to express themselves regardless of talent. Inspired by this culture of amateurism and contention, Rirkrit Tiravanija resorts to recurrent provocation in experimental situations, leaving viewers to interact freely with his installations and, thus, shift their status from visitor to participant. “ For me, the core of my work lies in the very construction. Without interaction or activation, it doesn’t exist.”

project
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA 
UNTITLED 2017 (AND THE CREATURES OUTSIDE LOOKED FROM PIG TO MAN, AND FROM MAN TO PIG, AND FROM PIG TO MAN AGAIN; BUT ALREADY, IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY WHICH WAS WHICH.)
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With the installation Untitled 2017 (and the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already, it was impossible to say which was which.), Rirkrit Tiravanija transformed the ‘art fair booth’ of Tommy Simoens at Westbund Art and Design into a single piece of art. 

Rirkrit Tiravanija
Untitled 2017 (and the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already, it was impossible to say which was which.)

publication
BERND LOHAUS
BLUMEN
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The book ‘Bernd Lohaus BLUMEN’ is a catalogue of the flower drawings and watercolours from 1963 until 2009 by Bernd Lohaus. An extensive chronological catalogue is preceded by more than 300 full-page color plates.

project
PAVEL BÜCHLER
FOR THE TIME BEING
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With For the time being, Pavel Büchler has arranged for a single diamond to be permanently installed at the Royal Atheneum in Antwerp. The diamond will be embedded in a windowpane of the schools’ AthenA hall, but it will be worth slightly less than the window. Any attempt to get the diamond back out will destroy the window and overwrite the value added by the diamond. In economic terms, without an exchange value the diamond adds zero value, which leaves it to breathe and be on the terms Büchler would prefer: as art. Based in Antwerp’s diamond district, the Royal Atheneum was founded in 1807 by Napoleon. Guided by principal Karin Heremans, and thanks to a group of dedicated teachers, the school has become renowned for the value it places on the arts in its pedagogical programme. Through collaborations with some of today’s most outstanding artists, it positively stimulates intercultural discourse and experimentation.

project
PAVEL BÜCHLER
FACTIONIS COMMUNISTICÆ PRÆCONIUM—1562
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For the occasion of the exhibition NEVER HAD AN IDEA IN MY LIFE at Tommy Simoens, Pavel Büchler commissioned a Latin translation of a passage from Karl Marx’s & Fredrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto (1848). It will be typeset and printed on the Plantin Moretus Museum’s historical presses. This single copy, Factionis Communisticæ Præconium—1562 will be added to the collection of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library by Iris Kockelberg, the Plantin Moretus Museum’s director. The work will be on display at the Royal Atheneum in Antwerp tomorrow night from 6-8PM.

project
PAVEL BÜCHLER
IN AMONGST THE ASHES
1.06 – 1.06.2016
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Using found text, images and obsolete technologies, such as slide projectors, typewriters and the printing press, the UK-based Czech-born artist Pavel Büchler distils new meaning out of the everyday.