NEW YORK, NY.- Ryan Lee is presenting Infinity by Japanese artist duo Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi in RLWindow, a work that investigates the veracity of a simple statement: Paths are made by walking. The silent five minute video documents Yamashita and Kobayashi over a period of five consecutive days as they follow a path on a lawn in Uster, Switzerland, where they resided. Each frame is a photograph taken in one-second intervals. The resulting high speed time-lapse video shows an infinity loop ( ∞ ) gradually emerge in the park grass as a deliberate inscription that considers the banality of purpose and ritual with a touch of humor.
Infinity has been screened previously at the 10th Instanbul Biennial in Turkey, 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Lingen in Germany, International Photographic Triennial, arte TV, insitu in Berlin, Arthouse at the Jones Center in Texas; Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo in Spain, and STUK Kunstencentrum in Belgium, among others. This will be the first viewing of the video in New York.
Yamashita (b. 1976, Chiba, Japan) and Kobayashi (b. 1974, Chiba, Japan) began working together officially in 2001. After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts, they moved to Germany, and have since lived and worked between Berlin and Tokyo. Their work has been exhibited widely, including at Futura Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, CZ; Goethe-Institut Japan, Kyoto, JP; ISCP, New York, US; Kunstmuseum Bonn, DE; MOCA Taipei, TW; Musée des Beaux-Arts et la Dentelle, Calais, FR; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, SP; Neuen Museum Weimar, DE; Tate Modern, London, UK; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, US; and Yokohama Triennale 2011, JP.
RLWindow is a dedicated exhibition space featuring video, installation, and performance art designed to engage High Line visitors, viewable from the elevated park at West 26th Street. Capitalizing on the gallery’s position overlooking the High Line and its visibility to almost 5 million yearly visitors, RLWindow will show innovative, experimental, and collaborative projects by international, contemporary artists, including RYAN LEE gallery artists and outside collaborations.
Forthcoming projects include work by Maria Antelman, Jakob Boeskov, Kevin Cooley, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mariam Ghani, Kakyoung Lee, Shin il Kim, Gabriel Lester, Joan Logue, Peter Sis, Sandy Skoglund, and Stephanie Syjuco.
