Tomoko Inagaki: soap opera

Aug.22 - Sept.12, 2004

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  Since her stay in England as an art student, Tomoko Inagaki has developed a series of performances and installations that were imbued with coolness, or provocation at times. Her performance ‘Sea’, in which she just continue weaving in silence an enormous structure of lace, or in ‘The Last Dessert’, a couple repeat the kiss until they run out of a whole lipstick, these works seem to reflect keenly an aspect of reality in today’s life by a close-up of repeated act.

 

  ‘soap opera’, the title of exhibition, refers to a ‘melodrama’, which has taken a firm hold on Japanese TV culture. The success of this genre of love theater owes a lot to its somehow stereotyped heroines and heroes, who invite the audience to overlap her or his daily small desires with their personalities. For this show, Inagaki has chosen several young women among her acquaintance and taken a series of portrait. One might see in the gaze of these amateur-models posing in a minimal decor a subtle realm between daily and fiction.

 

   The works on view, a series of photographs and a video installation realized from spring to summer this year, reflect also Inagaki’s mental transit in this period and will serve as a point of departure for her next commitment to the residency program at ARCUS Project in Ibaraki this autumn.

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● Opening hours: Tue.-Sat. 12:00-19:00. Sun.12:00-17:00. / closed on Mon.

■ Opening Reception: Aug.22, 5PM~