TOMOO ARAKAWA / CFGNY / ILYA LIPKIN / JASON LOEBS / YURI PATTISON / HIKARU SUZUKI / KAZUHITO TANAKA / SUNG TIEU / ANICKA YI

S/F -Photography, or a Monolith after 200 years
June 1 - 30, 2019
Opening reception: Saturday, June 1, 6-8pm

Curation: Tomoo Arakawa + Kazuhito Tanaka
Organizer: KAYOKOYUKI + soda

In the science fiction "2001: A Space Odyssey," a mysterious object, the Monolith appears.
The Monolith promotes the evolution of mankind from ape to humans through the invisible power that the huge vertical slab produces.
In 2019, our real world society is in turmoil as if it is under the influence of the Monolith, which should exist only in Sci-Fi.
We who became humans from the ape, now seem to progress towards our extinction. What is the meaning of evolution?
It has been about 200 years since photography began recording our world on small slab-like plates.
In this exhibition, artists from around the world present their unique Sci-Fi visions in new lights through photography.
Here in this world where reality and fiction are crossing and spinning, these artists create photography as a Monolith after 200 years.

Tomoo Arakawa
Born in 1975 in Fukushima. He presented his work as a photographer and also United Brothers, artist-unit with Ei Arakawa. He is also a derector of Green Tea Gallery and crates exhibitions around the world.
Recent exhibitions and curations took place at Freedman Fitzpatrick, Paris, France (2019), Halle für Kunst （Lüneburg, Germany (2018), Gió Marconi Gallery, Milan, Italy (2018), Francesca Pia Switzerland, Zurich (2018), Bortolami , New York, USA (2016), Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles, USA (2015), Frieze London, London, England (2014), etc. Publications include pfile magazine five, pfile magazine seven (monte'z press), Laugh at Experience (monte'z press). Design works include MaxMara "maxmagmalava" sunglasses (2018), UB Android with Nhu Duong " west coast affair " (2015), etc.

CFGNY
Founded in 2016, CFGNY began as an ongoing dialogue between Tin Nguyen (b. 1988, Attleboro, MA) and Daniel Chew (b. 1988, San Jose, CA) on the intersection of fashion, race, identity and sexuality. CFGNY continually returns to the term "vaguely Asian": an understanding of race as a specific cultural experience combined with what it feels like to be perceived as Asian. CFGNY does not wish to represent what it means to be Asian in the singular; instead, it encourages the visualization of the countless ways one is able to be Asian.
Recent exhibitions and collections include Fake Fashion III, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018), KAYA_The Store, Capri, Dusseldorf, Germany (2018), New Fashion II, 47 Canal, New York (2018) and Back to School curated by DIS, PS1, New York (2017).

Ilya Lipkin
Born in 1982 in Riga, Latvia, Lipkin grew up in Queens, New York and currently resides between Berlin and NYC. Lipkin studied at the prestigious Whitney Independent Study Program, graduating in 2009. He is also a commercial photographer who photographs for brands like Balenciaga, and magazines like Double, Another Man, etc. He has exhibited his work widely in venues such as the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Autocenter Berlin, Silberkuppe, Emmanuel Layr Gallery, kim? Contemporary Art Center, as well as at the Liste Fair in Basel. His artwork is represented by Lars Friedrich Gallery in Berlin and Svetlana Gallery in NYC.

Jason Loebs
Jason Loebs (1980) lives and works in New York. He attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2011 and received an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Recent solo exhibitions took place at Ludlow 38, New York (2018); Essex Street, New York (2017) and Campoli Presti, Paris (2014). Kunsthalle Freiburg, Switzerland hosted an institutional solo exhibition in 2014 with an accompanying catalogue and past group exhibitions were held at Fridericianum, Kassel curated by Susanne Pfeffer (2014) and the Swiss Institute, New York (2013).

Yuri Pattison
Born Dublin, 1986, lives and works in London. Yuri Pattison's work explores the multiple relationships between visual cultures, space, communication technologies and the circulation of information. The artist covers the various media often juxtaposed or dispersed, uses data and metadata, along with a mixture of factual materials, archival sources and historical fragments.
Solo exhibitions include context, collapse, mother's tankstation project, London; Trusted Traveller, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (both 2017) and user, space, Chisenhale Gallery (2016). Recent group exhibitions include The Dutch Savannah, Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Museum De Domijnen; Territories of Complicity, transmediale 2018 face value, HKW – Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (both 2018); The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, Bonner Kunstverein; The Everywhere Studio, ICA Miami; STILL HUMAN, Rubell Family Collection/ Contemporary Arts Foundation, Miami; and Extra Bodies, Migros Museum, Zurich (all 2017); British Art Show 8 (touring 2015-2017); Transparencies, Bielefelder Kunstverein / Kunstverein Nürnberg, The Weight of Data, Tate Britain (2015).

Hikaru Suzuki
Born in Fukushima in 1984. Currently lives and works in Tokyo. After studying Sculpture and Video Art at Musashino Art University in 2008 and Film focused on Cinéma vérité at Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) in 2011, he received a grant for Overseas Study for Young Artists from Pola Art Foundation in 2013. Additionally he started to study Film in Berlin at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF until 2015 and earned his Master's degree in the film class of Thomas Arslan and the art class of Nina Fischer at Berlin University of the Arts (Institute of time-based Media) in 2018. Lived in Berlin from 2012 to 2018.
His films and video works have been shown in art spaces and film festivals, among them Image Forum Festival (in several prefectures in Japan), WRO art center (Wroclaw, Poland), Yokohama Civic Art Gallery Azamino (Kanagawa, Japan), Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan), KAMERA JAPAN FESTIVAL (Rotterdam, Holland), Japan Film Festival (Frankfurt, Germany), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin, Germany), Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien (Berlin, Germany) etc. Also, his collaboration project „BETWEEN YESTERDAY & TOMORROW Omnibus 2011-2012 for FUKUSHIMA“ was screened in New Docs Japan section at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2011.

Kazuhito Tanaka
Born in 1973 in Saitama, Japan. After graduating Meiji University in 1996 and then working as a corporate employee, he moved to New York. Graduated from School of VISUAL ARTS (NY) in 2004. Questioning the relations in between photography and painting, he explores new abstract expressions using photographic medium. He also organizes exhibitions as a curator in parallel with his career as an artist. He is a director of artist-run- space soda founded by him in 2018 in Kyoto. Currently lives and works in Kyoto and Saitama.
Recent solo exhibitions include Trans / Real -The potensial of Intangible Art vol.7 Kazuhito Tanaka, gallery M, Tokyo (2017), pLastic_fLowers, Maki Fine Arts, Tokyo (2015), high & dry, Gallery PARC, Kyoto (2014), etc. Recent group exhibitions include NEW BALANCE #3, XYZ collective, Tokyo (2015), hyper-materiality on photo, G/P gallery shinonome, Tokyo (2015), etc. Recent curations include Photographs by 7 Painters, soda, Kyoto (2018), NEW INTIMACIES, Hotel Anteroom Kyoto Gallery 9.5, Kyoto (2014), Her Name is ABSTRA, Daido-Soko, Kyoto (2012), etc. He was awarded TOKYO FRONTLINE PHOTO AWARD 2011.

Sung Tieu
Sung Tieu (1987) is a German-Vietnamese artist based in London. Her artistic practice spans multiple mediums, including sound installations, video, sculpture, photography, performance and public interventions. Drawing from her own experiences with migration, Tieu’ s works often address topics such as cultural collision and displacement. Her recent works explore geographic displacement in relation to the psychology of sound, and theories of the hearing process. She is a 2018 graduate of the Royal Academy of Arts, London and will start a two-year collaboration and research project with the Warburg Institute in October 2018.
Tieu’ s recent exhibitions and performances include Manggha Museum Krakow (2018), Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin (2018), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017, 2018).

Anicka Yi
Anicka Yi was born in 1971 in Seoul, South Korea, and currently lives and works in Queens, New York City. Producing her first artworks in 2008 with no formal training, Yi’ s entry point was a self-directed study of science.
Known for her frequent collaboration with scientists and perfumers in the development of her work, Yi employs unconventional materials – that often were, or are, alive – to examine what she refers to as “a biopolitics of the senses” . Recent exhibitions and projects include Anicka Yi, Life Is Cheap at the Guggenheim, New York (2017); the 2017 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Anicka Yi, 7.070.430K of Digital Spit, Fondation d’ entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Basel and Kunsthalle Basel (2015); and Inhuman, Fridericianum, Kassel (2015). Yi was awarded The Hugo Boss Prize 2016 and the Absolut Art Award 2017.