Obscenity at artMRKT San Francisco

“Obscenity” has been shown at artMRKT at Fort Mason Center, San Francisco. It’s through Swarm Gallery and as one of their “Project Installations.”

KQED: 10 Outstanding Bay Area Art Experiences By Christian L. Frock

Christian L. Frock selected Art & Soul at Oakland City Hall in which I had my installation as one of “10 Outstanding Bay Area Art Experiences!!” >>Link

Apophasis – solo exhibition at Swarm Gallery

My solo exhibition “Apophasis” has opened at Swarm Gallery. Great artist James Sansing is showing a beautiful piece in the project space concurrently.

December 1, 2012 – January 20, 2013
Gallery | APOPHASIS | Taro Hattori
Project | REMEDIATION | James Sansing

Reception Saturday, December 1, 2012 6 – 8PM
With musical performance by Karen Kanan Correa

http://swarmgallery.com/current/

Swarm Gallery
560 Second Street
Oakland, CA 94607

T/F: 510-839-2787 (ARTS)

Wednesday – Sunday 12PM – 5:30PM
First Fridays 6 – 9PM

Stairway to Heaven

This is a project I did at Millay Colony, working with Edna St. Vincent Millay Society which would organize tours of her land. I created miniature stairways which go down to Edna’s nude party swimming pool. Karen Kanan Corrêa played music with me. Well, I still don’t know how I am going to present this work, so I cannot tell anything more than that here.

A write-up by Christian L. Frock

Christian L. Frock wrote on KQED about “Art & Soul” at Oakland City Hall and my work there!

http://www.kqed.org/arts/visualarts/article.jsp?essid=104611

Can Serrat, Barcelona to Millay Colony, New York

Now I am at Philadelphia airport transferring flights from Barcelona to Albany. I came back from Can Serrat an artist in residence program in Barcelona and now starting Millay Colony in NY.

Can Serrat was a wonderful place, probably the best place for the quality of meals among all the residency programs I had experienced. One month was not enough at all to pursue my ambitious project and to enjoy innumerable exciting places in Barcelona. I am pretty sure that I will come back to Barcelona to continue my project and explore more of Catalonian culture.

Here is a little description of what I was working on at Can Serrat.

I wanted to do an activity which represents how I encounter the people in El Bruc. One of my favorite musician Pau Casals was from Catalonia and he always ended his concert with this song “El Cant dels Ocells (the song of the bird)” which seems to be a symbol of their identity surviving through the history of struggle. Encountering a foreigner is like mirroring one’s self. Through meeting someone from outside, we become conscious of who we are. So, I asked people in El Bruc to listen to Pau Casals’s “El Cant dels Ocells” and experience it and, if they like, to sing with it. The title of the project “Peace! Peace! Peace!” is from Pau Casals’s speech at an UN conference, describing how the birds in Catalonia sing in the air. I also learned the song my self. So I went to some spaces in El Bruc with the guitar, and whistle the melody, and sometimes asked people to teach me difficult pronunciations of Catalan lyrics of the song.

<—a day has passed—>

Here I have arrived at Millay Colony after spending a night at a motel close to the airport which made me a bit sad because it was not in Barcelona anymore not only geographically but also conceptually or culturally. At the airport/airplanes, and there at a model, I got totally deprived of good food, good time, beautiful people, etc. Well, thought, here I am. My residency at Millay Colony has started. I have, at this point, very strange feeling of not being catch up with the change. Here are some pics.

Oakland City Hall Final Iteration

Somehow the combination of perfectly mathematical architecture and perfectly assembled sculpture became unbearable. So, I destroyed the piece (re-installed as destroyed/disassembled). This process taught me so much. I became more aware of these things: 1. what the character of architecture of the site represents, 2, psychological and temporal feelings the photograph of my sculpture creates and 3, what physical presence of sculpture can do (physical and conceptual representations) and 4, how I can relate myself to those through my actions…

I normally don’t do this kind of “play.”

Area 51 (photograph presented as a part of installation)

Nuclear Power Plant

Oakland City Hall

This installation is for “Art & Soul” (August 4-5, 2012) but it is on view in the City Hall building now through the end of August. Please see the office hours of City Hall and it’s totally open to the public. More people in Oakland should know how beautiful the building is.

Well… Hope this one works out…

Went to Rancho Seco Park for shooting… just a making photo at this point : )

Vermont Studio Center

After 15 days of road trip from CA to VT, I finally started my residency at Vermont Studio Center. There must be close to 70 artists here, and some of them seem to be still MFA students, and many of us, including I, have teaching jobs. I am having interesting conversations everyday, every occasion.

“Birds” on Miami New Times

Article about my solo exhibition “Where Do Birds Go Off to Die” at Black Square Gallery on Miami New Times by Carlos Suarez De Jesus.

Solo at Black Square Gallery in Miami

“Where Do Birds Go Off to Die” my solo exhibition at Black Square Gallery in Miami just opened. The title is the same as my previous exhibition at SF Arts Commission Gallery. This time, I expressed a poetically expanded vision of the same theme; how we, or our survival systems destroy ourselves.

May 21st – July 5th
Black Square Gallery
2248 NW 1st Place, Miami, FL 33127
Telephone: 305-424-5002
www.blacksquaregallery.com

Black Birds

Black Birds

Desire to Fall

Desire to Fall

Desire to Fall

Desire to Fall

Exinclusivity
watch video trailer of Exinclusivity

West Collection

Yesterday Thursday April 21st 2011, an exhibition of West Prize 2011 opened on the outskirts of Philadelphia. This location is a part of SEI, an investment company. In her speech, Paige West announced West Collection’s plan to obtain their own gallery/museum space for their collection in Philadelphia, and then she gave the final prize. I did not get it. Well, it’s one of those things that you sometimes get and sometimes don’t. But it made my day a bit sadder. But I don’t have time to be disappointed.

Interviewed by Kristin Farr form KQED

Kristin Farr and Emmanuel Hapsis from KQED visited my studio and interviewed me. We had a fun conversation.

>> go to the article

Exinclusivity at Pro Arts (Oakland Art Gallery)

I picked them up on the street to work for me.

I am showing my new performance/video installation at ProArts located at Oakland Art Gallery. I titled this new work “Exinclusivity.” I hope you can come to see my new exploration. Through my previous sculptural installation practices, I had been thinking about how desire and power make us self-destructive often from the historical or political point of view. This time, I wanted to deal with the sa in a more direct way through exploitative labor conditions.

2 x 2 Solos: Taro Hattori

March 8 – April 8, 2011
Artists Reception: March 10, 6 – 8 PM

Pro Arts 150 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA 94612 (at Oakland Art Gallery) 510-763-4361
http://www.proartsgallery.org/

“Exinclusivity” at Pro Arts (Oakland Art Gallery) from Taro Hattori on Vimeo.

I specially thank to these great people and institutions:

Steve Blumenkrantz, Michael Damm, Jessica Diaz, Mariana Garibay, Ellen Lake, Thomas Lopes, Gary Nakamoto, California College of the Arts, Stanford University, National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Swarm Gallery (CA), Black Square Gallery (FL), Peter Miller Gallery (IL), many others who continue helping my practice.

West Collection / West Prize

West Collection selected me as one of 10 West Prize finalist and decided to acquire Obscenity -version 1 (picture below). It seems those 10 were selected among 2100 applicants! Wow. I am honored and also amazed by the number, considering their reviewing process. In May 2011, they will host an exhibition in Philadelphia and announce the final prize winner for $25,000. They will review our proposals for how to spend the prize.

Short lines about my work in Miami…

It’s on Miami New Times by Carlos Suarez De Jesus

>> Read the Article

First time in Miami

Black Square Gallery in Miami present my work along with 5 other international artists. If you are coming to Art Basel in Miami, I believe shuttles are in service from the convention center to Wynwood Arts District where the gallery is located. Wynwood is the most active art district in Miami with contemporary art galleries. I am showing “Purge,” the series of small-size paper aircraft with explosion smoke and “…till that morning” the cardboard installation of B-29.

Black Square Gallery
Dream Catcher Project
Opening at November 29, at 7 pm
until January 6
Wynwood, 2248 NW 1st Place (on the cross with 23rd St), Miami, FL 33127 
Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm
During Art Basel Miami Beach week everyday from 9 am to 7 pm

Artists:
Comenius Roethlisberger and Admir Jahic (Switzerland)
Nazar Bilyk (Ukraine)
Pablo Lehmann (Argentina)
Taro Hattori (USA)
Volodymyr Kuznetsov (Ukraine)
Zhanna Kadyrova (Ukraine)

Some of my news…

Vermont Studio Center gave me a fully funded fellowship for their residency program. It will be in July 2011.

http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/october-1-award-winners-2/

http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/

Black Square Gallery in Miami now represents my work in Florida. Some group Exhibitions and Solo exhibition (Feb 2011) are coming up. Stay tuned.
http://www.blacksquaregallery.com/

Matthew Post will curate my work for 2×2 Solos Exhibition at ProArts. It is a “two-solo” exhibition… It will be in March 2011.
http://www.proartsgallery.org

My work 1951 series is featured in Intersection: World Culture in the East Bay by East Bay Culture Corridor, a collaborative effort by the cities of Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville and Richmond.
http://www.510arts.com/intersection.php?artist_id=1249

Where do birds go off to die

I am showing a new installation Where Do Birds Go Off to Die at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery for a group show Now and When. The reception is this Friday June 4th from 6 to 8 pm. My work in not in the main gallery but in the window installation space at 155 Grove Street around the corner from the gallery.

Now & When
Exhibition Dates: June 4 – September 4, 2010
Opening reception: Friday, June 4, 6 – 8 pm
Locations: Main Gallery and Grove Street

SFAC Gallery
401 Van Ness Ave (at McAllister)
San Francisco, CA 94102
p: 415.554.6080 | f: 415.554.6093

Window Installation
155 Grove Street

Where Do Birds Go Off to Die (2010)

The world began without man, and it will end without him.
-Claude Lévi-Strauss

Anyone whose goal is “something higher” must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? … No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
-Milan Kundera

When we finally disappear, nature returns. Nature erases our footprints slowly but surely, and quietly but ruthlessly. Human civilization and history we nurture becomes a part of nature gradually, and this transitory moment vanishes into perpetuity. For som, death means the beginning of emptiness, but for nature, it means the end of alteration of specific matter and the beginning of another alteration of it. Our will for civilization is vertigo. Do pelicans, who fly along the seashore, feel vertigo?

Where Do Birds Go off to Die is supported by the Graue Family Foundation.

Special Thanks to:

Nate Ancheta
Dan Bacci
Mayumi Hamanaka
Gary Nakamoto
Tomo Saito
Bassem Yousri