Exhibition

Opening: 21.2.2019, 6-9pm
Finissage: 7.3.2019, 6-9pm

Exhibition duration: 22.02.2019 – 06.03.2019
Opening hours: Th/Fr/Sa 5-7pm

FANNI FUTTERKNECHT (AT)
FERNANDO MESQUITA (PT/AT)
INES HOCHGERNER (AT)
石井 潤一郎 JUN’ICHIRO ISHII (JP/FR)
石黒 健一 KENICHI ISHIGURO (JP)
LIA KARL (AT)
梶原 瑞生梶 MIZUKI KAJIHARA (JP)
東野 雄樹 YUKI HIGASHINO (JP/AT)

The Yesterday / Today / Tomorrow is a two-part presentation with eight artists based in Kyoto and Vienna. The exhibition showcases various approaches to contemporary art production, from conceptual installations to performative works, and aims to encourage an active dialogue among the artists from diverse backgrounds. The year 2019 also marks the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relationships between Austria and Japan. The first part, Yesterday’s Tomorrow Is Today takes place at The Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ) in Vienna. The second part, titled Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow will be shown at the project space HIGURE 17-15 cas in Tokyo this August.
The focuses of these two titles are the specific moment in time, the abstract Today, that slides through time which we, human beings, needed to categorize and place in between Yesterday and Tomorrow. If we zoom in, we can call it Now. Though these words indicate singular moments, they constantly shift their positions and create peculiar in-between spaces in our understanding of temporality. The silence between two musical notes is one such space, generated as a void between two instances of intentional marking of time, two Now-s. Visual transposition of this space could be the blank between lines drawn on a piece of paper. In Japanese, as in other east asian languages, a word for such interval, both in time and space, is Ma. It is a concept that captures the complex interplay between many factors that creates the in-between spaces. The Chinese character, or Kanji, for “ma” 間 is composed of “門” which represents a gate or entrance, and “日” which means the sun or a day. It evokes scenes such as the setting sun seen through the gate or sunlight shining through a door. In one character, the time-space continuum is perfectly captured. Here the world is not perceived to be composed of independent subjects to be analyzed individually. Instead, it understands the world to be the relationship between things. Thus, the languages from this region often refer to the location where things are, which states they are in, and their encounters in time and space, in the names of things. This tendency also makes the language inherently aesthetic, each word also a composed picture. 
In the analytical tradition of the Western thoughts, which dominates its worldview, a concept that describes such awareness of the in-between-ness of things, of the fluidity of form and time, and the intensification of perception through the condensation of complex picture into a single element, does barely exist. The starting point of this self-organized group show was a quest for such in-between spaces, and the possible artistic expressions to represent them, by two collectives, See you next Thursday and C13. The exhibited works are either conscious attempt at such depiction, or were chosen for the inherent affinity with this quest. A self-organized project has to declare a clear identity under a unified concept and present itself as a concrete substance, a unique concentration of time and energy in a particular place, where the interests of the participants are debated, defined and clarified. 
The content of this exhibition does not belong to one or the other group. Instead, it emerged organically through the exchange of the two. The show is a meeting point where both sides found the capacity to listen to each other on the others terms. It is an acknowledgement of the interaction that seeks to negotiate a sustainable compromise for existing alongside one another, not as a unity, but in a plurality. 
This exhibition is not about Ma per se, but a consequence of the potential relations/reactions triggered by these connections, between the two groups, between the artists, and what is inherent in other, undefined actors. If we once again zoom in, we see a show that reflects the potential of the conjunction, a connector that proposes continuation. It is the smallest instance of a now that was extracted from the shifting sand that is time, temporary fixed, somehow, in this group show.

Concept: Jun’ichiro Ishii and Lia Karl
Co-Curation: Shaoan Huang
Organization: 梶原 瑞生 Mizuki Kajihara, VBKÖ and See you next Thursday

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