25th October - 24th November 2001
Shigemori Residence, Kyoto
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Installation view                                                                                                                                            Installation view click

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Untitled                                                                                                                                         For more installation views click

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Following Gabriel Orozco, Koo Jeong-a and Dan Graham, Heimo Zobernig has been invited to realise the fourth and concluding project in the Shima series this autumn.

For his project, Zobernig will position a white projection screen between the garden and the main room of the Shigemori Residence. The screen will thus obscure the central and ideal perspective of the garden as it is framed from inside the room, blocking the very view from which, in traditional Japanese houses, the garden is perceived as an image and contemplated as a kind of tableau vivant.

Through Zobernig's semi-architectural intervention, the conventional function of the Japanese garden as a locus of contemplation and meditation will be suspended, its serene rocks symbolising holy islands (which were once considered the site of divinities) will be eclipsed.

Yet, Zobernig's gesture does not erase the garden, rather it creates a play of visibility and invisibilty, of concealment and exposure, as fragments of the garden slide in and out of view. Instead of functioning as a static image, the garden will be experienced by the viewer walking towards the main space along the veranda. The blank, shimmering surface of  Zobernig's structure will among other things, be a screen of projection onto which the garden is both remembered and imagined.

Adhering to his practice of not wanting to prescribe a singular interpretation of his work, Zobernig's project remains untitled and characteristically ambiguous, a screen for all manner of metaphorical projections. While it is constructed out of video projection material and its proportions mirror those of video projections, the structure hovers between architecture, sculpture and painting. However like many of Zobernig's objects and installations, the screen has also internalised the principles of the ready-made and seems to call into question its supposed in-situ character and, by implication, the premise of site-specific projects. 
 
 

Mirei Shigemori Residence
34 Kamiojicho, Yoshida Sakyoku, Kyoto 606-8312, Japan
Fax +81 (0)75 761 8776  E-mail shima753@hotmail.com
Due to limited access by appointment only

with the kind support of Institut Franco-Japonais du Kansaï and Japan Arts Fund
 

English | Japanese

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