We were lucky to catch up with Takeshi Kanemura recently and have shared our conversation below.

Takeshi, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

73836: SEVEN—Installation Exhibition Since 2012—a year after the tsunami hit Japan—Takeshi has created multiple pieces of art reacting to the disaster. He has been visiting Japan (Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, specifically, both of which sustained major damages in the tsunami), producing inspired work, and showcasing his art in the United States, Taiwan, and Japan. While doing this, he founds that people’s need for cultural interaction makes for better communities. This is now Takeshi’s motivation for being an artist.
Takeshi’s most recent show in Taiwan, Echoing in Between, at the 182 Artspace in Tainan City, and collaboration performance, Monster-Monster, at the Tung Fang Design University in Kaohsiung City, incorporate the essence of his reaction to the tsunami. Seven years after Takeshi’s artistic renderings of 2012—when he realized the need for cultural interaction—he would like to open a new phase of this exhibition in Taiwan.
Entitled 73836: SEVEN, this exhibition showcases three key installations: Three-One-One, An American’s Summer, and Masaru, plus related artwork (photographs, sculptures, etc.) based on Takeshi’s previous works.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My work is a metaphor for my viewers: it is impossible to avoid the invisible and nonverbal conflicts and hardships that exist today. I want to reveal those subconscious conflicts through my work because the ambiguous state of how it is presented (“What is Takeshi doing? Why is he doing this? Does he want me to think/feel a certain way?”) will allow for a more natural response from my audience.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Ultimately, my goal is to activate my viewers’ perceptions by giving them the freedom to be engaged physically or emotionally. I want to transform the consciousness of being a passive viewer to a willing participant. With painting, it is through my body’s capacity to deliver a language that is nonverbal, intense, and emotional. With my installations, it is the interaction that makes it a performance. Despite a different response every time, an action, reaction, and commentary will provoke thought and reflections. My purpose as an artist is to be the catalyst for drawing out these organic reactions of our human condition.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My work is like a public park. It is an environment that captures my body movements, project actions, creates boundaries, separates here and there, and narrates stories. The performative aspect of my work represents the activity that may be occurring in a park. In my performance, the hanging fabric from the ceiling reflects multiple documentations of my movement. For example, the dripped paint and its patterns reflect human actions and emotions. I consider the presence of the viewer and their interaction as important elements to my work. Viewers can see outside or inside through the fabric. This ambiguous boundary becomes an environment similar to a park for the viewer to explore. It is to my observation that when people visit parks, they do not talk about the environment itself. They come to the park to enjoy time to themselves or to interact with others. My work offers the same interaction in that it functions to create the possibilities of human interactions. Even when I am not present and performing in the space, it remains interactive for the viewer. And in the same cycle, when the viewer leaves, my work again, becomes static until an invitation presents itself for another viewer to experience the production of the environment that I have created.     

Contact Info:

• Website: takeshikanemura.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/takeshi.kanemura

Image Credits
Takeshi Kanemura