“Why Are You Still Doing This?” On Recomposing the Archetype

On Friday, April 17 at 6pm, please join us at the gallery for a public conversation between Seongmin Ahn, Sao Tanaka, and Chié Shimizu, moderated by Kosuke Fujitaka on the occasion of the current exhibition Beyond the Archetype.

Why Are You Still Doing This? This is a question the artists in this group—who use traditional materials and methods—have often encountered from audiences. If contemporary art is ostensibly driven by a constant demand for innovation, why continue to engage with so-called “traditional” forms of expression today?

This idea plays an important role in understanding their practices. In this talk, the three artists in Beyond the Archetype, through distinct approaches informed by the art histories of their respective contexts, explore what cultural memory from history signifies for them—and whether it can give rise to new archetypes in contemporary practice

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