Aki Sasamoto
Clothes Line
19 July – 4 August 2018
White Rainbow is delighted to present Clothes Line – a solo exhibition of drawings and films of performances by Aki Sasamoto (b. 1980, Kanagawa, Japan). This is the artist’s first presentation at a UK gallery.
Based in New York, Sasamoto works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever other media required to get her ideas across. Sasamoto’s performance/installation works revolve around gestures on everything and nothing. Her installations are careful arrangements of sculpturally altered found objects, and the decisive gestures in her improvisational performances create feedback, responding to sound, objects, and moving bodies. The constructed stories seem personal at first, yet oddly open to variant degrees of access, relation, and reflection.
At White Rainbow, Sasamoto presents a selection of drawings realised during three of her major performance installations to date. These are: Wrong Happy Hour, JTT, New York (2014); Yield Point, The Kitchen, New York (2017), and Delicate Cycle, SculptureCenter, New York (2016). While all originating in New York, where the artist lives and works, iterations of these projects subsequently travelled to art institutions in Japan and Brazil, among others, where Sasamoto also realised performances and drawings. During her performances, Sasamoto draws on whatever she has to hand. These works, referred to by the artist as diagrams, are almost akin to musical notations or a score – a way of getting her ideas down while thinking aloud. Typically, during the course of an exhibition by Sasamoto, she will stage a number of performances, realising a drawing each time, which then will go on to form part of the installation. While similar, the drawings contain the particularities of each performance. As physical objects, they outlast the performance or installation of which they become part.
Sasamoto also delivers a performance at White Rainbow, and in so doing, creates a new diagram. For Sasamoto, the confessional, cathartic nature of delivering these performances lends each diagram a distinct emotional resonance. White Rainbow stages the first exhibition solely of Sasamoto’s diagrams, focusing on a key aspect of her performance practice.
As an artist, Sasamoto follows her nose, and her research and artistic interests can lead her down any number of paths. Whether stemming from research into fetish wear, dung beetles, or observing the latent romanticism of strangers drinking at a bar during happy hour, Sasamoto’s performances and installations draw from her direct life experiences, and just as life can throw up unexpected encounters, so too her work is open to chance happenings or surprising relationships. Crucially, the installation aspect of Sasamoto’s work sees these encounters and thought processes reflected materially, both sculpturally and in her use of found objects.
Aki Sasamoto (b. 1980, Kanagawa, Japan) is a New York-based Japanese artist who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever other mediums it takes to get her ideas across. Sasamoto’s performance/installation works revolve around gestures on nothing and everything. Her installations are careful arrangements of sculpturally altered found objects, and the decisive gestures in her improvisational performances create feedback, responding to sound, objects, and moving bodies. The constructed stories seem personal at first, yet oddly open to variant degrees of access, relation, and reflection.
Her works have been shown both in performing art and visual art venues in New York and abroad. Besides her own works, she has collaborated with musicians, choreographers, scientists and scholars, and she plays the multiple roles of dancer, sculptor, or director.
Born 1980, Kanagawa, Japan
Lives and works in New York, USA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2018 Clothes Line, White Rainbow, London, UK
2017 Menu, Take Ninagawa, Tokyo, Japan
2017 Wrong Happy Hour, Mendes Wood DM, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2017 Yield Point, The Kitchen, New York, USA
2016 Delicate Cycle, SculptureCenter, New York, USA
2015 No Choice, Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2014 Wrong Happy Hour, JTT, New York, USA
2012 Talking in Circles in Talking, Soloway, New York, USA
2012 E_O, Take Ninagawa, Tokyo, Japan
2012 A LIKENESS HAS BLISTERS, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, USA (with Agnes Martin)
2010 Strange Attractors, Take Ninagawa, Tokyo, Japan
Selected Group Exhibitions
2018 Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown – NMAO’s 40th Anniversary Exhibition, National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
2018 Objects Like Us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, USA
2018 New Japan, Solyanka State Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2018
Rehearsal, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
2017 Sequences VIII: real time art festival, Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
2017 Common Exchange, Cambridge Common, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
2017 Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2017, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2016 3rd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India
2016 11th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China
2016 O / U, Room East, New York, USA
2015 Visitors, Governor’s Island, New York, USA
2015 Dojima Biennale 2015, Dojima River Forum, Osaka, Japan
2015 Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, New York, USA
2015 PARASOPHIA: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015, Horikawa Housing Complex, Kyoto, Japan
2014 Pier 54, High Line Art, New York, USA
2013 Out of Doubt: Roppongi Crossing 2013, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2013 Kool-Aid Wino, Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT, USA
2013 Neo Povera, L & M Arts, CA, USA
2013 Struktur & Organismus III, Marillenhof – Destillerie Kausl, Mühldorf, Germany
2013 A Spoken Word Exhibition, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
2012 Gwangju Biennale 2012: Roundtable, Gwangju, South Korea
2012 Oh, you mean cellophane and all that crap, Calder Foundation, New York, USA
2012 Omnilogue: Journey to the West, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India
2010 Make a monkey out of clay out of clay in CULTURED, Miami Design District, Florida, USA
2010 Greater New York: 5 Year Review, MoMA PS1, New York, USA
2010 Whitney Biennial 2010, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
2009 One Minute More, The Kitchen, New York, USA
2009 Living Room 2009, Auckland, New Zealand
2008 Yokohama Triennale 2008: Time Crevasse, Yokohama, Japan
2008 Freeway Balconies, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany
2006 Tokyo – San Francisco Arts Festival, The Lab, San Francisco, USA
2005 Praying Project, Exit Art, New York, USA
Selected Performances / Theatre Productions
2016 Their Shoes, Elastic City, New York, USA
2015 Food Rental, High Line Art, New York, USA
2015 Skewed Lies / Parallel Stare, Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, USA
2014 Skewed Lies, TBA Festival, PICA, Portland, USA
2014 Sunny in the Furnace, The Kitchen, New York, USA
2013 WE LIVE WITH ANIMALS in Performa 13, Van Alen Institute, New York, USA
2012 Centripetal Run, The Chocolate Factory, New York, USA
2012 Good Tool, Gallery Diet, Miami, USA
2012 ¡Lo Carnavalesco!, Mycellium, Piso 51, Mexico City DF, Mexico
2010 100 Years of Performance, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, Russia
2010 Transart Festival, Bolzano, Italy
2009 Prompt, Performa; collaboration with Momus, White Slab, New York, USA
2009 Domestic Partners, The Chocolate Factory, New York, USA
2007 Area 51; collaboration with Yvonne Meier, Danspace Project at St. Marc’s Church, New York, USA
2007 Construct, Exit Art, New York, USA
2007 CRAM, The Chocolate Factory, New York, USA
2005 DRAWN, The Chocolate Factory, New York, USA
Awards
2017 Grants for Artists in Visual Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts
2016 Japan Cultural Envoy, the Agency for Cultural Affairs
2013-14 Grants for Overseas Study by Young Artists, Pola Art Foundation
2012 Oscar Willliams and Gene Derwood Award, The New York Community Trust
2011-12 Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japanese Government
2007 Visual Art Grant Award, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation