August 3 - 18, 2024
13:00 - 20:00 (Mon. Tue. Wed. closed)
Gallery10[TOH], Tokyo
Daiichi Silver Building 1F, 5-20-11 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 151-0051, Japan
Gallery10[TOH] is pleased to present "PROTOPIA," a two-person exhibition by Mika Kan and Kumi Kaguraoka starting August 3.
Kumi Kaguraoka focuses on the interface between society and the body, and explores the "image of the body" through cultural universality.
Her main works include "Metamorphosis of the Aesthetic Body," in which she considers "aesthetic power" to be the fourth most important value in human society, after intellectual power, physical strength, and financial power, and reconsiders the artificial modification of the body through "decoration, restraint, and loss. The main works are sculptures.
The main work is a three-dimensional installation that includes drawings, prototypes, videos, photographs, and text collected through research.
Mika Kan, who has been pursuing the differences between humans and dolls by creating dolls with faces identical to her own and photographing twin portraits, will present her new work, "Planet of Cyborgs.
She will present her new work, "Planet of the Cyborgs," in which she explores the differences between humans and cyborgs by creating dolls with the same face and photographing twin portraits. Today, digital cameras have a filter in front of the image element that cuts out the visible light. Once the limiter is removed from the camera, the mechanical eye sees as a different species." and focusing on the fact that the camera can detect infrared and ultraviolet rays that humans cannot see, the artist will create an installation of photographic works that make the "machine eye" visible to humans.
The title of the exhibition, Protopia, is a term proposed by American thinker Kevin Kelly.
The word "Protopia" is a combination of "PRO," meaning "progress," "progression," and "prototype," and "topia," meaning "place," and refers to a third place that is assumed to be realistically feasible.
The future we are heading for will not be a "utopia" where all problems have been solved, nor will it be a "dystopia" where everything has become dysfunctional.
Humans have been evolving since time immemorial, using their imagination based on our bodies, inventing all kinds of creations, and designing nature and even life.
Both artists, Mika Kan and Kumi Kaguraoka, will be prophets, hinting at the near future that will happen to us all.