TOKYO.- It is said that, of the approximately 8 billion people that inhabit the earth today, we get in contact with a total of about 30,000—or 0.000375% of the earth’s population—in our lifetime. When imagining all the people on the planet that we don’t and will never know, we realize the immense scale of human existence that exceeds by far what we can grasp with our own bodily senses.

One thing that facilitates the plural nature of the body in this world is its reproductive functions. At the same time, given the plurality of bodies in the present age, advanced medical technology has enabled one body to survive by sharing parts of multiple human bodies through organ donation, blood transfusion, etc. The pervasion of digital technologies in everyday life promoted the virtual multiplication of individual bodies, whereas images of avatars or bodies modified using apps, for example, assume multiple identities through various aspects on levels other than physical reality.

This exhibition, focusing on the plural existence(s) of (the) human body/ies, features Shoji Asami, Shikichi Osamu, and Marion Paquette, three artists who examine in their respective works the mutual bodily relationships between human individuals. Shoji translates the worlds that she explores with her body into painted spaces to create works that viewers are to experience in a way as if moving back and forth between their own and the artist’s body. Considering his dance as a form of communication at a stage prior to verbal formulation, Shikichi pursues ways of transferring and internalizing sensations generated through interactions between individuals into other bodies. Paquette’s creations are collective structures that incorporate human individuals in coexistence and interaction with each other, constructing spaces where the boundaries between private and public are blurred. Each focusing on the delicate relationships between individual bodies that continue to affect one another, the three artists create works that project the plural nature of the human body, remind us of the imaginative faculty and sensibility as its fundamental abilities, and inspire us to envision new possible ways of extending/expanding it into different forms of “bodies.”

Artists: Shoji Asami: Lives and works in Tokyo. Considering her body as “the origin of painting,” Shoji has been exploring in her work the physical image and sensation that arises through the experience of “viewing a painting.” Her work at large is characterized by an approach of painting intuitively without defining beforehand what the finished painting will look like, using mainly semitransparent acrylic panels and canvases as support media. Shoji’s exhibition this time comprises several dozen new works including oil paintings, around a series of drawings as a centerpiece.

Shikichi Osamu: Lives and works in Brussels and Tokyo. Shikichi explores ways of grasping one’s own body and its “reality” as things that are impossible to perceive objectively from the outside, by way of interacting with other people in our immediate, material environment. Revolving around a central axis of choreography and dance, his works incorporate elements of sculpture, video art, etc. The subject of Shikichi’s work at this exhibition is the Noh play “Izutsu” (“well enclosure”), he translates the story into a performative installation, based on his own texts related to choreography.

Marion Paquette: Lives and works in Montreal. In their artistic practice, Paquette creates interfaces and situations through which they explore the delicate relationships between bodies, spaces and objects. In this exhibition, Paquette presents a large-scale installation that was inspired by a mycelium structure of fungi that serves as a foundation for ecosystems of living organisms and invites to reconsider the collective body that is human society.

Organizer: Tokyo Arts and Space, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture.