Koki Tanaka, Precarious Tasks #9, 24hrs Gathering, 2014
Collective acts
Commissioned by ICA London

Deutsche Bank has announced its “Artist of the Year” 2015: The Japanese Koki Tanaka follows Wangechi Mutu (Kenya), Yto Barrada (France/Morocco), Roman Ondák (Slovakia), Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), and Victor Man (Romania) as the sixth international artist to be honored with this award. In 2015, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin presents Tanaka’s first major solo show in Europe.

“Koki Tanaka is one of the most original artists of his generation to emerge on the global art scene in the last decade. A shrewd observer of the most ‘indifferent’ matters of the everyday, he always manages to magically transform them into fantastic events with a sense of humor, offering open but pungent implications that reveal the uncanniness of existence,” writes Hou Hanru, artistic director of the MAXXI in Rome, in a statement on the jury’s selection. “On the other hand, Tanaka, a global trotter, is also a savvy mobilizer of collective actions and encourages sharing and exchange among participants to produce a common sense of creativity and imagination while probing new rules of negotiation and collaboration. Tanaka’s work represents an inventive approach toward exploring the question of community making—a truly important issue in today’s aesthetic and political experiments across the world.”

The award was given on the recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council, comprised, along with Hou Hanru, of the renowned curators Okwui Enwezor, Udo Kittelmann, and Victoria Noorthoorn.

Stefan Krause, the Deutsche Bank board member in charge of the global art program, explains: “Koki Tanaka forces us to see everyday things with new eyes. He represents a new generation of artists who connect their aesthetic concerns to social issues. This corresponds perfectly to Deutsche Bank’s commitment to art.”

Koki Tanaka, born 1975 in Tochigi, Japan, lives and works in Los Angeles. He became known through installations and actions in which he implements everyday objects and material found on site. A major part of his work consists of participatory projects that incorporate actors and exhibition viewers.

Tanaka represented Japan at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, where his unsettlingly simple experiments proved that collaborations can pose a huge challenge: how do we treat one another, how do we treat things? What happens when nine hairdressers cut a woman’s hair all at once, or five potters craft a ceramic vase together? The experimental teamwork also reflected on theFukushima catastrophe, which forced people to band together and form communities. Tanaka is interested in communication, power, and ethics—but also in the aesthetic quality and form of the collaboratively produced work of art.

In his early works, Tanaka was involved as an active participant and still defined the general parameters of his work. Now, however, he leaves the making of the artwork up to the participants, whose actions and decisions dictate the result—without the artist’s input. He described his Biennale works as follows: “You might say that these are proposals for an ideal situation in which an artist accomplishes his work thanks to the kindness of others. They are invitations to people to step out of their daily routines and participate in an orchestrated situation where you can experience what it means to fruitfully engage with ‘strangers.’”

A Behavioral Statement (or an Unconscious Protest)
2013
collective acts, video documentation (8min)
commissioned by The Japan Foundation
Equipment support: ARTISTS’ GUILD

precarious tasks #4 sharing dreams with others, and then making a collective story
2013
collective acts
created with blanClass, Yokohama and supported by The Japan Foundation

A Poem Written by 5 Poets at Once (First Attempt)
2013
HD video (68 min 30 sec), 4 framed papers written by participating poets
commissioned by The Japan Foundation
Equipment support: ARTISTS’ GUILD

abstract speaking – sharing uncertainty and collective acts
The Japan Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013
curator: Mika Kuraya
organized by Japan Foundation

Currently, works by Koki Tanaka can be seen in group exhibitions at the LondonICA and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.

Positions – Five projects in dialogue
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
7/5 – 10/12/2014
http://vanabbemuseum.nl/

Journal
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
6/25 – 9/7/2014
https://www.ica.org.uk/

Please find more on the official website of ArtMag by Deutsche Bank:
http://db-artmag.com/en/81/news/deutsche-bank-honors-koki-tanaka-as-its-artist-of-the-year-2015/

Text Resource: http://db-artmag.com/
Courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou and Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo.