Invisible Energy: roomsheet


Yoshinari Nishio, Self Select (installation view), 2015.

Invisible Energy showcases the work of six contemporary Japanese artists practising in the aftermath of the 3/11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Japanese art has a sophisticated and nuanced aesthetic history dating back centuries, but the work in Invisible Energy also exists within a social situation that has underlying tensions, affects and energies resulting from these recent disastrous events. Including staged performance, installation, community collaboration, video, and comics, the exhibition seeks to link the resonant energy of their work to the energy that one experiences in a place like Tokyo, one of layered histories, social complexities, codified and opaque behaviour and one which is hard to describe but easier to understand as a visceral experience.

Yoshinari Nishio will be in Auckland late February to 6 March to make a new version of his ongoing series Self Select on the streets of central Auckland. Yoshinari will collaborate with volunteers to design and construct a mobile changing booth, and they will then take to the streets to meet passers-by and temporarily exchange clothes. Wearing each other's clothes participants, artist, and passers-by will be photographed together. The photos will be printed and displayed in the gallery, accumulating over the time he is in Auckland. Look for Yoshinari and collaborators in and around Aotea Square between 4-6 March.


Invisible Energy (installation view), 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

Invisible Energy (installation view), 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

Invisible Energy (installation view), 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

Invisible Energy (installation view), 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

Invisible Energy (installation view), 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.

Invisible Energy (installation view), 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.