exonemo: UN-DEAD-LINK
Reconnecting with Internet Art
Aug. 18—Oct. 11, 2020
- Aug. 18—Oct. 11, 2020
- Closed Mondays (except when Monday falls on a holiday, in which case the museum is open and closed the following day)
- Admission: Adults ¥700(560)/College Students ¥560(440)/High School and Junior High School Students, Over 65 ¥350 (280) * Admission is free for grade school children or younger; junior high school students living or attending schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area and holders of Japan’s disability identification cards (shogaisha techo) together with one caregiver.* Free admission for everyone on “Citizens Day, ” Oct 1 (Thursday).
Having used the Internet as material for their works since its spread into the mainstream in the 1990s, net artist duo exonemo (Sembo Kensuke and Akaiwa Yae) has been a driving force in the realm of media art with their humorous approach and fresh perspective. This exhibition reconstructs representative works of the New York-based artists from their beginnings to the present, including pieces acquired for the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum’s collection, and presents a new take on the charm of their works. This large-scale exhibition of exonemo’s works, equivalent to a retrospective exhibition at a public museum, is the first in Japan and a valuable viewing opportunity. By taking a close look at the situation surrounding the art world since the advent of the Internet, viewers will reconsider the history of media and explore new possibilities for expression today.
The online venue showcases exonemo’s back catalog, along with the two online works being shown at this exhibition: "Realm" and "UN-DEAD-LINK 2020". All these are presented in an interactive timeline that chronicles the duo’s activities, offering further insight into their art. The timeline provides extra background information about the artworks, each tagged with various keywords that allow visitors to discover new connections. The exhibits at the museum, which consist of artwork and documentation, are arranged in chronological order except for "Signature, 2020" and "The Kiss". Each exhibit is also tagged with one of five thematic keywords proposed by the artists – Internet, Platform, Interface, Random, and Boundary – that link them to other works.
The online venue https://un-dead-link.topmuseum.jp/en
《Realm》2020
《DISCODER》1999
《FragMental Storm》[Installation version] 2007
《HEAVY BODY PAINT》2016
exonemo
exonemo is a Japanese artist duo formed by Sembo Kensuke and Akaiwa Yae in 1996. In 2006, “The Road Movie” won a Golden Nica at the Ars Electronica, the world’s largest media art festival. Recent exhibitions include “Aichi Triennale 2019” (Aichi Arts Center, Aichi, 2019); “SUNRISE/SUNSET Artport” (Whitney Museum, New York, 2019 [Online exhibition]); “Hello World: for the Post-Human Age” (Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, 2018); “Reincarnation of Media Art” (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], Yamaguchi, 2018); and the solo exhibition “TO THE APES” (Mitsubishi Estate Artium, Fukuoka, 2013). exonemo has been based in New York since 2015.
http://exonemo.com
□Supported by the Project to Promote the Archiving of Media Arts 2020, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan