SHIHO KAGABU

Artist bio

Sunrise Surfer
December 19, 2015 - January 24, 2016
Opening reception: Saturday, December 19, 6-8 pm
Winter holidays: 12.28-1.5

SHIHO KAGABU　Sunrise Surfer　2015
photo by Hayato Wakabayashi © Shiho Kagabu

KAYOKOYUKI is pleased to announce the solo exhibition with Shiho Kagabu. Kagabu was born in 1981 in Kanagawa, Japan.

Recently, Kagabu presented her work in "Tokorozawa Biennial of Contemporary Art "railroad siding 2015" in Saitama, "KAKEHASHI Project" at Japan Society, New York, 2014, "Artist File 2013:The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art” at The National Art Center, Tokyo, "TAMAgawa tatta hi” at JIKKA and NADiff window gallery, Tokyo, 2013, "Signals//Itabashi//2011 Live the landscape" at Itabashi ArtMuseum, Tokyo, "VOCA2010" at The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, "Open Studio Program No.51" at Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, "back to the drawing board" at geh8 Kunstraum und Ateliers e.V., Dresden, Germany. Lives and works in Tokyo. http://www.kagabu.com/

Shiho Kagabu creates a body of sculptural work often using materials that have become unnecessary in everyday life, such as discarded objects that have been weathered and deformed on the street or tools that have lost their functionalities. To compose her installations, the artist places each sculptural element partly guided by her memory of the process of how it has come together and arrived in that very place. As a result, the entire space turns into an autonomous ecology resembling those in nature, presenting generation and circulation through the system called sculpture, where the artist's body also is a part of the whole on equal terms with each of the other sculptural components.

The title of the exhibition, Sunrise Surfer, sees Kagabu's methodology in how surfers read incoming waves, wait for the right moment, and adjust their bodies to the irregular forms and varied velocities of swells of seawater, particularly during "the blue hour," the period of twilight in the morning when the sun is still below the horizon, where everything, deprived of its textures and colors in the blue light, appears equal.

Her work suggests that the ways to interact physically and sensuously with the world that humankind developed by trial and error could serve as a guidepost for us today to seek harmony and balance in contemporary society.

Escapeways, Waymarks, Guideposts

Along with quiet sleep-breaths,
Moving on at 70km/h.
Red flecks, and
Black stripes
Passing one after another.
May all this stay accelerated.

Walking over a long distance,
Seeing dead ends formed.
Cries and screams, all over.

Invisible colors, inaudible sounds.
Cross this line, it's this way.
I'll create a guidepost, escapeways.
Rest assured. All safe here.

Pre-arranged destruction. Escape.
Fun, of block play.
Pull down, downfall, build up, pull down.
Memory erased.
Inspiration. Build up. Lift up.
Collapse. Fix up. Transport.
Memory erased.
Lift up. Awareness

Needlework, space out, or pull down.
Lift up.
Holes emerge.
Red scatters.
Into blue.
Back to square one.

Uprise. Holes emerge.
Fill in.
Lift up.
Pulled down.
Lift up. Build up.
Memory erased.