Yuuki Horiuchi

Imitation. Fire. Place
6 – 12 June, 2018ththAs part of the exchange between the CSM Associate Studio Programme and Youkobo ArtSpace, Tokyo; Yuuki Horiuchi is presenting adisplay of work-in-progress in the Vitrine atCSM.
Yuuki has spent six weeks in London working
in the Elephant & Castle studio, while Alice Jacobs, one of the Associates from the Stockwellstudio, spends the same period in Tokyo. On
their return Kenta Kowagoe will arrive fromTokyo, swapping with Tuli Litvak from London. This collection of work-in-progress pursues Yuuki’s research into the everyday rituals of gathering and sociability.
Yuuki Horiuchi is a Japanese artist who uses various
forms including installation, 8mm film, photography
and drawing.
Writing about her work in London Yuuki says: “I’ve beenshooting some videos of imitation fireplaces in DIY.
stores. They were clustered together on the huge display
shelves, one above the other, and were all working eventhough it was the hottest day in May. But of course, theimitation fireplace doesn’t heat the store, not does it illuminate it. So, if its purpose it to create an ambience,and perhaps a visual focal point in a much smaller do-ering together – particularly of the family in the home(a role the fireplace might have once played, to beusurped by the television, which has now lost out tothe smartphone and the computer)? Is it a reflection on
our detachment from the elements, produced by modern urban life? Is it an attempt to return to something
more ‘simple’, more ‘fundamental’?
Despite the obvious pretense we seem willing to overlook the artificiality of these pieces of interior decoration and allow ourselves to be a little bit entranced.
As someone who lives in Tokyo, a very dense, busy andsometimes stressful place, I am also a person who is
attracted to these things (while also recognising thatthey are just imitations).
This moment of fascination, revere or whatever it isthat attracts and holds us here is exactly what I want tomake happen in this space.”
In the work-in-progress presented in the Vitrine Yuuki recreates and extends the distance between a realfire and its simulation, with the video image (and thescreen itself as an object) acting as both another imitation fireplace, and a record of the excessive stagingof them in the DIY store display. Playing on a loop thevideo crosses and re-crosses the line dividing these two‘places’.
This is coupled with references to the temporary‘place’ of the dinner table (with the table cloth marking another ‘centre for a gathering’). The assemblage
also includes postcard images bought in London junkshops, and other found images from the CSM Library,
onto which mysterious patterns are plotted. They resemble star charts or contour lines as if they are mapping or divining other hidden patterns or places.
Yuuki Horiuchi
yuukihoriuchi.tumblr.com
Thanks to: Andy Marsh (Curator in Practice, BA Culture,Criticism and Curation, CSM); Mark Dunhill; Youkobo
Art Space, Tokyo; Kaori Homma; John Seth (4D Pathway
Leader, BA Fine Art, CSM).

About the Associate Studio Programme.

mestic interior what function it has is denied it in theshop.
For a long while I have been interested in why people
are attracted to fire and flames, and why people need (orleast want) the imitation fireplace even when it doesn’t
provide heat and light? Is its appeal in the way we canuse it as an alibi or focal point for sociability and gath-

Developed in partnership with Acme Studios CSM’s AssociateStudio Programme provides highly affordable studio space in ourStockwell and Elephant & Castle studios to a total of twenty CSM BA Fine Art graduates, for two years. Directed by Graham Ellard, Professor of Fine Art, the Programme is now in its
fifth year - the Stockwell studio having opened in 2013. The Programme includes studio visits by artists, curators and writers nominated by the Associates themselves.
The exchange with Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo has developed outof a relationship with Youkobo and Tokyo Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts) and is now in its fourth year.
www.doubleagents.org.uk
www.youkobo.co.jp
www.acme.org.uk