Go for Kogei will participate at the Parisian Art Fair Asia NOW to be held from October 17th to 20th 2024.
Go for Kogei will participate at the Parisian Art Fair Asia NOW to be held from October 17th to 20th 2024, and present Collective Action, an artist collective formed by artist Shinichiro Yoshida and curator Yuji Akimoto, which will exhibit the art installation The Mingei Spirit: Minimalist by Nature.
<Special Exhibition at Asia NOW>
Parisian Art Fair Asia NOW, now in its 10th edition, was launched in 2015 as a platform for showcasing the diversity of Asia’s contemporary art scene. Each year, the fair features special exhibitions curated by guest curators and invited organizations, and has been attracting great attention as a venue for introducing the evolving Asian art scene.
An art collective formed by the artist Yoshida Shinichiro and the curator Akimoto Yuji is presenting the art installation The Mingei Spirit: Minimalist by Nature at Asia NOW 2024. The exhibition will showcase the beauty of simple living through organic textiles historically worn by Japanese laborers.
[Artist] Collective Action
Collective Action is an art collective formed by Yoshida Shinichiro, a prominent artist, collector, and scholar of plant-based textiles, and the curator Akimoto Yuji. Yoshida formerly produced paintings that sought new expressions of the color white, but shifted to studying plant-based textiles after first encountering them over 40 years ago and starting his own collection of ramie and hemp textiles. Akimoto is an art critic and curator. He first became involved in art projects as a curator on the island of Naoshima in 1991. After serving as the director of the Chichu Art Museum and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, he taught as a professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts while serving as the director of the University Art Museum, and the director of Nerima Art Museum. He has served as the executive director and curator of Go for Kogei since 2021.
[Collaboration] Majotae
Majotae is the first Japanese textile brand to successfully harness modern technology to replicate the superior smoothness and softness of traditional hemp textiles. Research into pre-19th-century techniques enabled the company to replace handspun and handwoven processes with the latest innovations and industrial methods. The result is a revolutionary machine-woven textile that is 100% hemp—a feat once thought to be impossible—that has now been patented worldwide.
[Exhibitor] GO FOR KOGEI
Organized by the NPO Syuto Kanazawa, Go for Kogei is Japan’s premier destination for groundbreaking takes on contemporary craft in the Hokuriku region, an area traditionally known for its superb craftsmanship. Held annually since 2020, the event juxtaposes craft with the adjacent genres of contemporary art, art brut, and design to highlight rich and multivarious forms of expression that challenge conventional understandings of the word “craft.”
*The exhibition is financially supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Government of Japan, Japan Arts Council, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG).