Urban Gaze
Ryoko Kimura, MES, Ryohta Shimamoto, and Yoshidayamar

February 7 - February 18, 2024
at El Cisne, Chapultepec, CdMX

eitoeiko is pleased to present "Urban Gaze," an exhibition of Japanese artists in Mexico City. Theexhibition will be held at El Cisne in Chapultepec, and in collaboration with APRDELESP, four Japaneseartists/curators will explore the dark side of the city. Urban Gaze will start with a public production onFebruary 7 and run through February 18. The development of mines and cities has been an integral partof Mexico's modernization since the 19th century. Urban Gaze simultaneously explores post-Internet
art urbanism, which began with the "underground" and "home" as "darkness," and the culture nurturedby the "ruins/historic sites" and "mining" that preceded it.
The genre of "Black Metal" is a music born in the cities. Among the trends that have been subdivided
from black metal are "Depressive Suicide Black Metal," a brooding, one-man band that creates its own
sound, and a form of black metal called "Post Black Metal". It has a tone similar to shoegaze and iscalled "Black Gaze" because it is so clean and fresh. Black metal itself could be called extreme art
urbanism in that it originated from the darkness of the city, and in this way, there are various turns
within a single musical genre, which is like the yin and yang of the city. Therefore, in Urban Gaze, wewould like to connect this keyword "gaze" with the keyword "city," and consider connecting each workor action with the keyword "Urban Gaze".

Artists:
Ryoko Kimura
Ryoko Kimura(born in Kyoto, 1971) received her MA in mural painting at Tokyo National University ofFine Arts and Music, 1997, has created "handsome paintings," inverting the motifs of Japanese culture
to depict beautiful women, and has exhibited her scrools, folding screens, and barrier paintings inJapan. While researching Aztec civilization and current Mexican culture, Kimura plans to create a muralpainting that overlaps with Japanese topics. Football was introduced to Mexico in1901 by Alfred C. Kroll, a British mining engineer. On the other hand, there are
historical documents showing that a foot-based ball game called ulama was played
during the Aztec civilization, and recently, for the first time in 500 years, it is being
recreated. In light of this situation, this exhibition is currently being conceived of
as a mural inspired by the pose of the twin shot, a special move in the footballmanga "Captain Tsubasa" by Yoichi Takahashi, which has had a global impact on
Japan.
From the act of using Japanese stylistic beauty to paint a mural of a soccer gameunderground in Mexico City, it can be read as multiple layers of rhetoric. Also to beexhibited is a work using rock paint as a "mineral," an axial work that overlaps with the image of"sacrifice" of the Aztec civilization. This work will also be related to the urban underground culture.

MES
MES are an independent artist duo organized and produced by Takeru Arai, who has a background in
sculpture and spatial art, and Kanae Tanikawa, who has roots in literature, theater, and performance.
They formed MES in 2015 at Tokyo University of the Arts and are based in Tokyo. They observe urban
and social changes from the peripheral realm between contemporary art and club culture which areintimate and inseparable, and confront social issues that runfrom the Meiji era (19th Century) to the present. Most of theirworks are project-based installations and performances that
explore time-based and site-specific approaches. They use
light effects and thermal changes, combining technology as
well as temporary and variable materials such as lasers,
thermography, luminescence, candles, temporary construction
materials, and furthermore text, sound, and physical actions.
MES's work centers on deconstructing by tracing the contours of divisive social norms and practices,such as capitalism, nationalism, and gender, that dominate the lives of a certain group of people. Since
2016, they have been active as VJ performers and in stage production, using laser animation. They also
engage in community practices: they independently hosted “REVOLIC - revolution holic-”, a party thatgathers revolutionaries and expressions from various fields in a real space with an awareness ofintersectional issues.

Ryohta Shimamoto
Ryohta Shimamoto (born in Tokyo, 1986) has received his BA in Tama art
university, 2009. Shimamoto has known as a ceramic artist as well as acontemporary artist. One of his artwork, "Black Rain" will be presented as awork reminiscent of blasting during mining. Black Rain is an installation
conceived by the artist, who specializes in ceramics, as an object thatembodies the energy of an internal explosion in an accidental form. The
artist relates his work to the rain that fell on the burnt fields after the war,as described in the film "Black Rain," and refers to the nuclear accident inFukushima.

Shimatoto plans to create a sturdy cover and concentrate the explosion in a certain

direction to share the experience with the viewer as a performance.

Yoshidayamar
Co-curator Yoshidayamar exhibits a vinyl recording of a song
actually created and recorded by himself, as an attempt to overlap
black metal with the dark side of the city and the history of mining.
As for a plan, a record shop, one of the terminal forms of the musicindustry, will be installed at the venue as a cultural transmission
device to resonate with the artworks. In the shop, references related
to the exhibition will be consolidated, providing a mechanism for
visitors to obtain clues to learn more about the exhibition.

Urban Gaze
Ryoko Kimura, MES, Ryohta Shimamoto, and Yoshidayamar

VENUEEl Cisne
Augustin Mergar 38, Chapultepec

SCHEDULE
February 7 - 9 : 3PM-6PM sneak peek of installation in progressFebruary 10 - 11 : exhibition hours 3PM-8PM
February 12 - 16 : exhibition hours 1PM - 6PM
February 17 - 18 : exhibition hours 1PM - 8PM

COLLABORATORSAPRDELESP, Alejandro Garcia Contraras, Alexis Matta, Ileana Moreno, and others!!

EVENTS
please check!! updated event information: instagram@eitoeiko
Gallery Talk: February 18, 2PM-3PM w/ Pf. Miki Yokoigawa(UAEH)

Contact for exhibition:
ei@eitoeiko.com (Ei Kibukawa, co-curator/director)

This exhibition is:
Supported by Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for Historyand Culture)