PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Tatsuo Majima (眞島竜男)
b. 1970 in Tokyo, Japan; based in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan and Beppu, Oita Prefecture, Japan

Works in exhibition
Contemporary and Contemporary: Two 15-minute Lecture Videos, 2015
Documentary video of lectures held on two consecutive days, 2 video projectors, 2 screens, diagram (laser printing on paper) in Japanese and English
Video: 15 min. each

Diagrams on “Art Museums,” “Exhibitions,” “Fenellosa,” “Cheerful Country,” “War Paintings,” “Manchuria,” “On Kawara,” “Modern Art,” “Contemporary Art,” and “Art” (Japanese and English versions), 2015
Diagrams (laser printing on paper)
10 diagrams

Piled-Up Mud/Mud Jutting Out: (Two-Hour Diagram On) Kyoto, Parasophia, Ryusei Kishida, and Manchuria, 2015
Diagram (clay, plywood), video
Video: 2 hr. 42 min. 3 sec.

Diagram (Clay) for “Manchuria Wrestling,” 2015
Diagram (clay, plywood, clay tools), video
Video: 58 min. 50 sec.

Piled-Up Mud/Mud Jutting Out/Manchuria Wrestling, 2015
Diagram (clay, plywood, etc.)

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157656453858850

Tatsuo Majima studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. In the video piece he made shortly after returning from London, Japanese Modern Art/The Cheerful Country (1995), four Japanese painters from the 1930s get together outdoors for a barbecue and wine and engage in an imaginary conversation. As seen in works such as Beijing Diary (2010) and Kugenuma Sumo/Kyoto Boxing (first performed in 2010), Majima weaves ten percent fiction into ninety percent facts (verified through intensive research)in many of his works, deconstructing accepted notions of Japanese modern art history from an artist’s perspective. Starting from around the year 2010, Majima has been delivering an increasing number of lectures and performances such as Dance of the Day (2012–13), and his four-part lecture series for Parasophia, held over the course of six months, has resulted in an exploration of modern and contemporary Japanese art history through diagrams in a wide range of formats. The multiple diagrams and video footage of the lecture series describing the ways in which the past and present overlap and overwrite one another are works of art in and of themselves, conveying the synchronous nature of the Japanese modern and contemporary history on which Majima has consistently focused. A three-dimensional, experiential clay diagram, which took various shapes over the course of several hours, will also appear in one corner of the staircase in the venue.

• Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art