December 9, 2022

New Artist Picks: Wall Project
Urakawa Taishi
Notice: View of Yokohama Construction Wall through Mobile Phone
November 14 (Mon.), 2022 – May 31 (Wed.), 2023
Construction Wall, Yokohama Museum of Art

Yokohama Museum of Art

Construction Wall, 2022, acrylic, gesso, cotton on canvas, 75×322cm, Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka

Aimed at introducing the work of promising young artists, “New Artist Picks” hasbeen held at the Yokohama Museum of Art since 2007.
With the museum currently closed for renovations, two special “Wall Projects” arebeing held on the construction wall facing Grand Mall Park in front of the Yokohama Museum ofArt. Following on from the first edition, Murakami Saki | Stray Child, we are now pleased topresent the work of Urakawa Taishi (born in 1994), which gives expression to the sensibilities ofthe millennial generation.
Having grown up in the early 2000s, Urakawa is a “digital native.” His art reflects thepresent-day reality of high-paced information circulation that has been supercharged by theInternet and social media.

Installation view, Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka

The project showcases a series of five new works.
From left to right (facing the wall), they depict Yokohama from above, YokohamaMuseum of Art and Chinatown viewed from ground level, and finally, a scene of entering into thesea. Fragmentary motifs related to Yokohama are discernible amongst the images’ colored lines
and planes, but the connections with Yokohama run deeper than that.
The exhibition’s somewhat unusual
title, Notice: View of Yokohama Construction Wallthrough Mobile Phone, is a reference to Utagawa
Hiroshige III's View of Foreign Buildings onKaigan-dori Street from Yokohama Wharf(1870s), a work in the collection of the YokohamaMuseum of Art that Urakawa discovered while
researching on the Internet. Hiroshige’s work
UTAGAWA Hiroshige III
View of Foreign Buildings on Kaigan-dori Street from Yokohama Wharf
1870s, color woodblock print (3 pieces)Collection of the Yokohama Museum of Art (donated by Ms. SAITO Ryu)shows an American ship setting sail fromYokohama after loading, with several people
standing and watching from Kaigan-dori (nearpresent-day Yamashita Park), which at the time

was part of the foreign settlement. The two people standing on the far left of Hiroshige’spicture—who are probably pointing at another American ship in the distance—also appear in
Urakawa’s work.
However, now it is not an external object, like a ship, that this pair points to but theconstruction wall on which they themselves are depicted. In this way, the appearance in front of
us of “two people looking at the construction wall” naturally reminds us of our own gaze as we
too view the same wall. And thus their act of “pointing” serves to direct our attention to ourcommon act of “looking.”
Viewers reading the exhibition’s Japanese title will notice the deliberate use of theChinese term 智能手机 (zhìnéng shŏujī) for “smartphone” or mobile phone. The works here areconstituted by large printouts affixed to the construction wall, and on top of those Urakawa has
added a total of seven QR codes. Scan the QR codes with your phone, and once again yourattention is directed to the act of “looking.”
When we look at these artworks, or indeed the world itself, through a phone camera,
we are not just observing a photographic “subject.” Needless to say, we point our camera
because there is “something” there we want to see, or perhaps nowadays it’s more likely that
there is “something” there we want to share on social media.

In this way, Urakawa’s work evokes the “desire” that is embodied by this act oflooking. Here, the work is not something “external to the self,” like the visiting foreign ship in
Hiroshige’s work, but something that we actually enter through the use of the QR codes. Thanks
to Urakawa, a construction wall opposite the shop windows of a mall ceases being a silent, flat
surface and becomes a medium capturing people’s gazes and desires.

A Window and a Wall, 2022, acrylic, gesso, cotton on canvas, 75×322cm, Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka

Chinese Style, 2022, acrylic, gesso, cotton on canvas, 75×322cm, Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka

Biography
URAKAWA Taishi
Born in Fukuoka in 1994. Graduated from the Faculty of Art ofKyushu Sangyo University. Currently works and resides inFukuoka. Recent exhibitions include Vision of Contemporary Art(VOCA) Exhibition 2018 (recipient of the Ohara Museum of ArtAward) in 2018, URAKAWA Taishi & Namonaki Sanemasa Two
Person Exhibition Owarumade Owaranaiyo (Contemporary ArtMuseum, Kumamoto) in 2019, URAKAWA Taishi & Namonaki
Sanemasa Two Person Exhibition (Contemporary HEIS, Tokyo) in2021, and @sanemasa5x #landscape・and・so forthಠ_ಠ(Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo) in 2022.

Outline
New Artist Picks: Wall Project
Urakawa Taishi | Notice: View of Yokohama Construction Wall through Mobile Phone
Dates:

November 14 (Mon.), 2022 – May 31 (Wed.), 2023

Venue:

Construction Wall, Yokohama Museum of Art (3-4-1 Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama)

Admission:FreeOrganized by:

Yokohama Museum of Art (Yokohama Arts Foundation)

Contact
Fujii (Ms.), Nakamura (Ms.)
Public Relations, Yokohama Museum of Art
Yokohama Museum of Art, Temporary Office PLOT 48
4-3-1 Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, 220-0012, Japan
TEL: +81(0)45 221 0319

FAX: +81(0)45 221 0317

E-mail: pr-yma@yaf.or.jp*Yokohama Museum of Art is closed for renovation. We are scheduled to re-open in December 2023.