Taro Izumi. ex
Museum Tinguely, 2 September – 15 November 2020
Our large autumn exhibition offers an immersion in the quirky, mischief-filled world of Japanese artist Taro Izumi (b. 1976, Nara). Izumi has created a unique creative universe, an organic ecosystem that does not fit into any established artistic category. It closely intermingles sculpture, installation, performance and video: a sculpture becomes an installation, which is in turn made into the scenery for a performance, which itself reappears on the multiple screens that populate his exhibitions. Likewise, materials such as wood, textiles, plants, fur, furniture and all kinds of recycled items are interconnected in structures that look like they have been cobbled together, but were nevertheless precisely assembled, the result of not only high technology and long-term reflection, but also spontaneous energy and a certain immediacy.
Taro Izumi manipulates opposites. He uses absurdity, chance, accidents and humour as constitutive elements of his work. The journey he has imagined for Museum Tinguely is scattered with mirages and optical illusions: a theatre where the public has vanished, sculptures that imitate acrobatic positions and robotic vacuum cleaners suspended in space. Izumi creates antagonistic and often surrealistic object pairings, the meaning of which often remains a mystery. Together, these objects root themselves in the absurdities of our everyday life to recount to us the gentle chaos of today’s world. Also reflecting on the unprecedented situation the world is presently experiencing, Taro Izumi explores the space in between presence and absence, inside and outside, while inviting the viewers to enter his imaginary world.