Ishii Tomohito Icarus and the Spirit of Place

TOKYO GALLERY + BTAP is delighted to announce Japanese artist Tomohito Ishii’s first solo exhibition in Beijing from July 6th to August 31st, 2024.

The exhibition Icarus and the Spirit of Place draws from the ancient Greek myth of Icarus, who melted by the sun and fell into the sea after flying too high using artificially designed wings, pointing at the dangers of humankind's over-reliance on technology. While the rapid development of modern industries and technology has expanded the scope of human vision, they have also weakened our relationship with nature.

Technologies have transformed images into data. Painting, however, is what the artist creates with matter and thought. It is not only images on a visual level but a place where events happen. Ishii’s paintings refer to the notion of the spirit of place, suggesting to the characters of a place that have been embedded in its history and culture. Similarly, unlike imaging technology, painting practice is the sum of events taking place at a given time. It refers to the history of art and lived experiences, reminding spectators to associate its relationship with the world. Ishii’s work draws sources from photographs and other found images, encouraging viewers to reconsider these issues from a new perspective.

This exhibition will include over twenty paintings and drawings by Ishii over a decade, featuring urban landscapes, botanical gardens, and stone tile still life to portraits and many subjects of the artist’s lasting interest. His "Sub Image” series of red, blue, or monochrome doppelgangers, completed in 2011, and his “Sub Anaglyph” series of positive and negative doppelgangers are also included. Ishii adopts his photographs and existing images as the source of his paintings and addresses issues concerning the domain of visuality as both the reception and projection of information. In recent years, the artist has experimented with reproducing images as a point of departure, dividing the image vertically and horizontally or splitting the visuality of semi-specular transmission/reflection, figuration and mechanical reproduction. Through multiple layers of pictorial resistance, Ishii presents a void where spectators discover the source of imagination and action.

Tomohito Ishii was born in Tokyo in 1981. He obtained a master's degree in 2006 in painting from the Graduate School of Art and Design, Musashino Art University. Ishii was the artist-in-resident at the Laforet Summer Vacation Project in Ghiffa, Italy (2017). He was part of major exhibitions, including “Daiwa Collection VII” (2015) at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum, Okinawa, “Complex Circuits” (2011) at Gallery αM, Tokyo, “15 Years” (2008) at Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, and “Portrait Session” (2007) at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima. His major awards and grants include the Musashino Art University Paris Award (2012) and the Holbein Scholarship (2005). He also participated in two consecutive editions of the Neo-Mōrōism exhibition at Tokyo Gallery + BTAP (Beijing) since 2013. This exhibition will open on July 6th, attended by the artist. We look forward to your presence.