Meiro Koizumi: FOG
PRESS RELEASE
MEIRO KOIZUMI
FOG
March 16 – May 18, 2019
Opening March 16, 5 - 7 pm
Annet Gelink Gallery is proud to present the fifth solo exhibition by Meiro Koizumi (1976, Gunma, Japan) with the gallery.
Last year, Meiro Koizumi collaborated with Theater Commons Tokyo to create a performance together with twenty young adults. This resulted in a video installation entitled We Mourn The Dead Of The Future.
In the performance Koizumi addressed themes of heroism and self-sacrifice that seem to reoccur throughout his career. Set in the freezing rain at the site of a former US army base, he asked the youngsters to conduct a ritual in mourning ‘the dead of the future’. Are people willing to sacrifice their lives for a nation, a state or for other ideals? By forcing the youths to face this proposition and the surrounding onlookers, emanating sanctity and pain, Koizumi confronts his viewers with the same ultimate question; Would you be able to sacrifice your life for someone or something?
At first, this question may seem somewhat exaggerated and unrealistic. If you don’t feel the urgency in your everyday life, it might feel unanswerable. Nevertheless, Koizumi confronted the young people with this question and asked them to announce their answers publicly. Because of this, their staged statements start to feel more and more like facts as the video unfolds. In times like these, it is not unimaginable that young people will be confronted with a similar question in the future. Koizumi empowers these youngsters by giving them the opportunity to create their own ritual. In this work, they are the ones in charge.
In the front space a ‘Fog’ drawing by Koizumi is on view. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, film director Yasujiro Ozu, was sent to China to fight. According to his diary, he made plans to make war films once he got back to Japan. His diary was filled with ideas. He saw and experienced the worst of the war, but never made a single war film. Through the gesture of erasure Koizumi attempts to bring this repressed dimension of Ozu’s diaries back to the surface.
Meiro Koizumi attended the International Christian University, Tokyo, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London as well as the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam.
Selected Exhibitions: 2019 A Tale of Hidden Histories at EYE Filmmuseum, Sharjah Biennale 14, the 12th Shanghai Biennale, The 9th Art Pacific Triennial and Battlelands, Minneapolis Institute of Fine Art. 2018 Battlelands, Perez Art Museum, Le nouveau souffle après la tempête, MAC VAL. 2017 Annet Gelink Gallery, Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem. 2016 Arts Maebashi 2015, Kadist Art Foundation 2014 Museum of Modern Art, New York 2013 Centro de Arte de Caja de Burgos (CAB) 2012 Art Space, Sydney 2011 and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo 2009.
His works are included in major public and private collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, TATE Modern, London, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, South Brisbane, and M+, Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong.
