2024.03.23

The 5th Floor, Tokyo
Artworks ©︎ Gottingham
Installation views © 2024 by Studio Xxingham K.K. is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

Project: Work Place, The Campus, Yoshihisa Tanaka × Tokyo Design Studio Cooperative Research Vol.02
Website: https://open-open.site/

Gottingham, Open Studio #1
2024
Mixed media
Variable dimensions

For artists working with photography, a two-dimensional work, an original print, is necessary to experience the image. Sometimes, artists consider the size of the plane in their studios. Architects, on the other hand, make models to simulate and experience space. Both artists and architects are thinking through the scale of their original prints or models, expanding and contracting the scale of the models. When looking back at the exhibition in the installation view, or when returning to the architecture in the completion photograph, the materiality disappears and everything is reduced to an image. It is as if the two-dimensional work hanging on the wall looks like a window, and the openings of the building look like two-dimensional works. The landscapes reflected by these works of various scales become landscapes of different distances. What do you see when you open a window or a wall separately? What do we want to see? In the studio, I reserve a series of images.

Gottingham, Untitled (Japanese Shoebox Ⅱ #219)
2021(2021)
Digital chromogenic transparency in artist’s frame
H746×W988×D85mm
Collection of Artist

You have probably seen sneakers displayed on top of shoeboxes. We will reverse such a routine position and put a shoebox on top of a sneaker. The shoebox has become the star of the show, transformed from the materials discarded in the sneaker manufacturing process through the technique of washi paper making. The sneakers, which usually shine in the spotlight, are only glimpsed from underneath the shoebox. In the next series, the shoeboxes are placed on top of the sneakers, but the viewer’s eye is placed in the center of the shoeboxes. As the matiere like Japanese paper intersects with the matiere of the light created by the light box, the viewer finally notices the existence of the shoelace, which is never tied.

Gottingham, Untitled (The Entrance Hall #101)
2021(2021)
Digital chromogenic transparency in artist’s frame
H746×W988×D85mm
Collection of KOKUYO

The central entrance building was reduced from the three interconnected buildings, leaving an open space between the north and south buildings. In order to express both the existence of the building as “it used to be” and the absence of the building as “it is no longer there,” I walked around looking for holes created by the renovation. I wanted to connect the multiple openings in the architecture via a non-scale image. However, light cannot be touched. Neither the view from the window nor the sky overhead can be touched. The magenta lens filter extends the exposure time.

Gottingham, Untitled (Floor Plan)
2021(2023)
Digital chromogenic transparency mounted on mat board
H283×W360×D26.5mm
Collection of SL&A Japan

The COVID-19 pandemic that originated in 2019 has forced workers in industries and occupations where it is possible to do so to work remotely. With psychological restrictions imposed on going outside, people began to think about “outside” and “inside”. Interior designers think about the “inside” “floor plan. One interior designer I met during the Corona disaster said that you can tell a building by looking at the floor plan alone. Beyond the global crisis of the pandemic, the “inside” environment is reconfigured like a puzzle. A non-illuminated light box, with the reflected ground concealed by a matte mount.

Database
2024
Single channel video installation
6 minutes 54 seconds

It is like an omnibus film composed of multiple stories depicted from different perspectives. The database can register tangible and intangible things, such as objects, time, people, and even information, but it is not a single thing in itself. In today’s pluralistic world, the subject of the database differs depending on the context in which it is used, or in other words, the context in which the registered objects are retrieved. The same is true of photography, a medium that has both autonomous and autonomous characteristics, and in which there are multiple subjects. Subjects and their plurality are related to each other, and a series of things are related to each other. Databases and images overlap each other without being separated from each other.

Open studio is a space that is not closed.
Open studio is a space to have conversations with the artist.
Open studio is a display space that is different from typical exhibition environments.
Open studio is a space to explore the boundaries between the artist and the artwork.
Open studio is a space to understand the environment and process of creation.
Open studio is a space to consider the artwork in the context of the artist.
Open studio is a space that layers the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Open studio is an uncertain and dynamic space.
Open studio is a space where the roles of host and guest are exchanged.
Open studio is a space for alternative exhibition formats.

Open studio is…
—Gottingham, 2024