Linke - Artinfo

28
datebook
cuRATOR’S c h O ice
Yuko Hasegawa
cuRATOR Of
ShARjAh BienniAl 11
What works of art would you own, if
space and cost were no object?
A Skyspace by James Turrell or On
Kawara’s book One Million Years.
Which artist, critic, or art world
personality, living or dead, would you
most like to have a spirited
argument with?
I would like to discuss spaces of coexistence
and communication through art with Peter
Sloterdijk, who rejects dualisms and
reconciles a rigorous academic approach
with an antiacademic sensibility in
pursuing a new ontology sometimes referred
to as posthumanism.
What’s the last great book you read?
Maurizio Lazzarato’s La politica dell’evento
[The Politics of the Event], 2004.
And your most recent musical discovery?
Yodeling, a form of singing practiced in
Alpine regions that incorporates rapid and
frequent changes from the natural voice to
the falsetto voice, as well as a method of
communicating vocally across mountains
and valleys. I became interested in it as a
practice that points to the original function
of singing and the human voice.
What’s one artistic trend that continues
to inspire you?
The cross-disciplinary trend. In particular,
I find collaborations and crossovers
between architecture and art the most
inspiring because they seem to incorporate
similar tendencies, including not only a
reconsideration of things like subjectivity
and emotion but also the creation of event,
relativity, and social space. I regard
architects as artists. In Sharjah I intend
for them to be involved at different levels,
from the construction of buildings and
pavilion-like structures on a small scale,
An aerial view of the exhibition spaces
for the 2013 Sharjah Biennial.
to interventions in spaces, collaborations
with artists, and so on.
Which exhibition that you’ve curated
recently are you the most proud of?
“When Lives Become Form: Contemporary
Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present”
[2008–09 at the Museum of Contemporary
Art Tokyo, which traveled to the San
Francisco Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
in 2009]. The exhibition included works
representative of the Tropicália movement
of the 1960s, which involved music,
subculture, architecture, and art,
alongside works by contemporary artists
who have carried on this tradition and
have sought since the 1990s to involve
themselves in the urban landscape
and the people who live there. It became
a kind of fundamental statement for
me of one the reasons why art exists.
What have you discovered while
preparing for the 2013 Sharjah Biennial?
The Islamic courtyards and labyrinths in
Sharjah that have become part of Arab
culture are inspiring. Courtyards
incorporate elements of both public and
private space, with the balance between
the two being different in various parts
of the world that have adopted courtyard
culture. Courtyards spread from the
Islamic world to the Alhambra and other
parts of Spain, Portugal, and the
Mediterranean, to Mexico and South
America. They also became prevalent in
North Africa. They developed eastward
via the Mughal Empire to India, China,
and Japan. These new cultural topologies,
and the new knowledge generated
through negotiation between the interior
and exterior of these courtyards,
presented me with the basis of a theme
for the biennial.
TOkyO
Gallery Talk
In March, the Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe
opened an exhibition space in Tokyo, Japan,
where co-owner Timothy Blum has spent a lot
of time in the past 25 years. Orit Gat talked to
Blum about the new outpost, which will be
directed by art historian Ashley Rawlings.
Tokyo isn’t an obvious choice.
The gallery has had a strong presence there
for 18 years now. But we got more actively involved
with Japan through our major show of the work
of the Mono-ha artists last year. That exhibition was
curated by Mika Yoshitake, who—until she took
a job at the Hirshhorn—was living in Japan and
working for us. So we had someone on the ground
there for years. When she moved on, it became
rapidly apparent that we needed not only to find
a replacement for her but also to ramp up
our presence there.
Why is that?
We now represent nine Japanese artists, and
we are getting more involved with the postwar
material. Mono-ha was one of the most successful
shows—if not the most successful—in our history.
And now we’re doing further study and looking into
individual artists. Couple that with Takashi Murakami,
Yoshitomo Nara, Chino Aoshima, and Lee Ufan,
who were already represented by the gallery—we
simply realized it needed to happen.
Is it your door to the region?
We have been talking about having a large presence
in Asia anyway, and it’s such a vast area that it
almost doesn’t matter where you are; you’re going
to have to travel constantly to keep up with things.
Will other galleries follow?
I don’t think there will be a rush to open galleries
in Tokyo. The market there is really difficult. For us
it’s first and foremost a function to be in Japan
for the artists. It’s a multifold project comprising
an office and, of course, an exhibition program.
Timothy Blum
March/april 2013 | BlouinArtinfo.comAsiA
from left: two images, sharjah art foundation; margarete jakschik