Okayama Art Summit 2016: Japan's New Triennial Contemporary Art Exhibition

By Claire Bouchara

A new triennial contemporary art exhibition will soon be held in Okayama, Japan. Okayama Art Summit 2016 will have its first edition from October 9 through November 27, 2016, organized by the Okayama Art Summit Executive Committee and directed by New York artist Liam Gillick.

Gillick has recently announced the artist lineup, featuring 31 contemporary artists, as well as the theme for 2016 surrounding the concept of development. Yu Araki, Trisha Baga, Noah Barker, Robert Barry, Anna Blessmann and Peter Saville, Angela Bulloch, Michael Craig-Martin, Peter Fischli, David Weiss, Simon Fujiwara, Ran Gander, Melanie Gilligan, Rochelle Goldberg, and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster are some of the many international talents who will be participating in the event.

Considering the Japanese city’s particular history in urban development, Okayama is an ideal location to explore such a concept and provide different levels of interpretation. Selected artists will create bodies of work which will either be in permanent development or continuously look back on the conditions of their production. All the artists have been selected for the distinctive way in which they play with various structures — ideological, formal or political — and they will provide many levels of exploration and experience for the viewer.

Additionally, Gillick plans for the audience to view the concept of “Development” in its cinematic sense, and the event will consequently offer two ways to encounter the works.

“Taking the first route, a single visitor can take the role of an individual ‘camera’ – seeing the city and the artworks from specific points of view. Taking the second route, groups of visitors function as collective subjects,” said Liam Gillick in a statement. The experience of the exhibition will thus be based on a collective effort to guide each visitor as “cameras or subjects.”

As viewers travel from one site to another, they will come across different layers of change, modernization, and reconstruction — aspects that are inextricably linked with the contemporary Japanese city.

“Okayama Summit 2016: ‘Developments’” will run from October 9 through November 27 throughout Okayama, Japan.

Source: http://www.blouinartinfo.com