KAYOKOYUKI

SLASH is a series of two-person exhibitions each as a collaborative project rather than mere juxtaposition of works by the two artists featured. Each exhibition begins with consecutive meetings to develop mutual understandings, learning each other’s vision and awareness. Discussing what kind of proposition to make toward society with their work, and going through all the possibilities, they would little by little build up their plan for the exhibition.
Even the invitation card is designed as a collaborative artwork. In relation to the artist's common interests, several key words are picked up and transformed into an abstract concept to which the art director CRAFTIVE would elaborately gives form with reasonable materials and methodologies.
I believe it is quite important to exchange ideas with others and take the initiative to create new values together, not following given directions set by certain powerful artists or curators, nor leaving it up to the trend of the times. Rather than trusting individual self-absorbed thinking, nor being worried about winning or losing, we just have to believe in the prolific imagination arising at the intersection of different ideas.

*SLASH derives from a type of fan fiction with the same name that focuses on a paring of two characters. The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/) to separate the two names in those stories, instead of using of the ampersand (&) conventionally.

"SLASH/06" will present an installation made in collaboration between the two participating artists, as a result of their one-month residency at the venue, a former residential, currently uninhabited house located in Kitasenju, downtown Tokyo. Like any other places, throughout different times, there have been many families and people moving into, staying, and leaving the house, breathing the air of the town, including its shopping streets and back alleys on the way from the station to their home.
In "ex-place," the artists' mutual interactions while dwelling in the site, as well as each artist's own sensitive reactions to the atmosphere and the remaining traces, will be expressed through various media, as if proving how artists have been always creating things through interactions with their given society, environment, family, and/or friends, rather than out of "nothing." Presenting at the site of creation, we will not only view the resultant work but also experience its process itself, by discovering various traces of actions.
Designed by CRAFTIVE, the invitation card tackles the same issue as well, by referring to the fact that in ancient Shinto, adding just one "folding" to a mere sheet of white paper would transform it into a significant amulet.