Sep 22, 2018 End of Summer 2018
Last month End of Summer completed its third year of programming, hosting a new group of contemporary artists from Japan at Yale Union in Portland, Oregon. Since 2016, the Imprint Culture Lab supported program has sought to cultivate cross-cultural connections between the U.S. and Japan through its annual residency program and lecture series. Outside of this core summer program, symposiums, exhibitions and other related projects are also organized in Japan, and internationally.
End of Summer exists to build a dialogue between the U.S., specifically the region of the Pacific Northwest, and Japan through contemporary art. Through this entry point, the program aims to engage in a larger exploration of Japanese art in the era of global artistic practice, as well as the continual reconsideration of notions of East and West, center and periphery.
In August 2018, the Artists in Residence were Shu Isaka, Kiyono Kobayashi, Mayo Koide, Aoi Yamanouchi, Chisei Kobayashi and Takeshi Yasura. Working from the studios at Yale Union, each artist initiated a new project or series of work which were exhibited at the culminating Open Studio event. The artists utilized spaces through out the Yale Union building, with installations and projects not only on view in the studios, but in the basement, library and hallways.
In addition to the residency program, End of Summer’s 2018 Lecture Series invited two internationally significant scholars in the field of Japanese Art History to Portland. Dr. Reiko Tomii delivered a lecture based on her recent publication, Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (MIT Press, 2016). The lecture outlined two basic concepts, “wilderness” and “contemporaneity”, as key methodological frameworks to construct local and global art histories. Dr. Tomii focused on three postwar artists/artist groups, Matsuzawa Yutaka, The Play, and Group Ultra Niigata, to illustrate “wilderness” as an artists’ strategy, before discussing the art historical strategy of “Contemporaneity” used to contextualize postwar practices in a world art history.
Gabriel Ritter presented on the concept of “nonsense”, which has shifted in precise meaning and usage in Japan, as a critical framework connecting the country’s postwar avant-garde with contemporary art practices in Japan. Utilized by different means, and to different ends by generations of Japanese art movements, from Neo-Dada to Neo-Pop, Ritter has suggested that “nonsense” continues to be a fertile concept for artists in Japan to challenge forms of dominate discourse, even as its usage and interpretation evolves.
End of Summer was fortunate to be on the receiving end of some thoughtful write ups and interviews while the program was underway, which provided further insight to the foundational thinking and background of the program:
Art & About PDX
Oregon Arts Watch
As the core August activities of End of Summer closes, the remaining months of 2018 still have much in store. The program travels to Sapporo, Japan in October to participate in a month long curatorial research program at S-AIR, and will organize an Artists Talk event in Tokyo with all of this year’s Artists in Residence.
To follow End of Summer’s ongoing activities, you can find the program online at http://www.end-of-summer.org, and on Instagram at @_end_of_summer_