adrian's blog

Reviews and reflections on the Japanese contemporary art world

Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi

adrianProfile

2011/11
October < > DecemberSM

67TWTFS

182345910 11 1213 14 15 16 17 18 19

Like so many before them, video artists Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi are walking thelong “weg” to Germany for funds to make a living. In their case, the path has taken the20 21 22 23 24 25 26

shape of an infinity sign, trodden out step by step out on the grass in Berlin’s Tiergarten.

27 28 29 30The couple, dressed as day trip hikers, are jogging round and round and round as the grassgoes yellow. The exhausting work is filmed in a hilarious speeded up silent film that at once
mocks the pompousness of Richard Long style “land art”, as well as treading a new line

11/11/13 01:39

towards an art of the absurd. Keep walking, keep smiling, even as life gets tough for young

Frantic

artists today.

11/10/31 02:25

ArtGig Hospital

Here is the video on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KdQ4aV4eB4

11/10/25 06:36

Jikken Kobo
11/10/07 23:28

Nouvelle Garde
11/09/23 00:08

The work, Infinity (2006), is a typical piece of dry irony from this cheerful art unit, who havedeveloped an impressive body of short and witty video works that can be viewed on their
excellent and fun interactive website.
http://www.yamashita-kobayashi.com/

Daisuke Ohba in London
11/08/23 21:59

Ozawa in London

The young lions filmed ripping apart canvasses (Lion & Canvas, images below) I first saw at
Yamashita’s PhD graduation show at GEIDAI in 2008. It suggests a whole line of animal art
putting artist materials to better use. Other works include: licking a giant candy ball for six

11/08/08 17:10

Kohei Nawa
11/08/03 02:28

months until it disappears; erasing all the negative words from newspapers; and “rescuing”
mineral water by pouring it back into nature. Yamashita had also filed a dissertation on
humour in art. It was the outstanding portfolio of the graduation show that year.

Atsuko Tanaka

Mai Yamashita+Naoto Kobayashi by Adrian Favell, Art-it

04:12

Orimoto19:03

i Ozawa & Relational

15:52Tanaka
19:48

子Sone
11:07

/ 亜 真里男
atsui (trans)
16:26

ogi Crossing Review
22:53/ 亜 真里男
n Copenhagen
22:29

ortgi Crossing 2010

Two aspects of their work interest me in particular. One is the dynamic of an “Art Unit” – inthis case, also a couple – a practice of doing art that is becoming increasingly significant inJapan. Above all, to practice art as a unit stresses a seriousness of purpose combined and a

Poweredrejection of the artist’s ego. The unit idea hints at anonymity in even the most compact ofsmall groups. Secondly, they are artists clearly in the line of “gentle intervention”, a modest
but distinctive trend in Japanese video art identified by Midori Matsui with artists such as
Shimabuku, Saki Satom, and Taro Izumi. The absurdist irony and the maturity of their
themes distances them from the humourless teenage angst art that Matsui often favours,
but there is a sly political edge to their work that might fit within a “Micropop” frame.

12:43

oano à Paris
23:25

rossing
21:00

Galapagos
08:20

London

11
10
98
7
6
5
4
3
2seviews
ws

oday: 78 hits
0 days: 6971 hits

I met the couple at a small house party with Hitomi Hasegawa, a highly active curator whoruns the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art in Yokohama. It was a delightful
evening over home cooked food and drink viewing videos with a group of high spirited
friends. In the mainstream global art world, we are more used to video art that plays
continually with provocation and baroque excess – the kind of violence, pornography, or
shock tactics associated with American enfants terribles like Paul McCarthy or Matthew
Barney. So it is refreshing to find uses of video that stress, in such a subtle, understatedwork, the virtues of humour, observation, and polite wit.
Yamashita and Kobayashi are presenting new works in Leipzig, Germany, as part of theircurrent residency.
ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com
2010/01/19 17:36

Comment(0)Trackback(0)

Mai Yamashita+Naoto Kobayashi by Adrian Favell, Art-it