GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The eight-channel video installation, Everything is Everything, was first created for exhibition at the 2006 Taipei Biennial, curated by Dan Cameron. For this work, the artist and two assistants spent a total of eight days recording their interactions and interventions with readily available items, including hangers, cups, towels, an air mattress, and toilet paper, all found around the city of Taipei. The physical properties of these objects were tested (a metal hanger is stretched to its breaking point) or their uses were expanded (a level placed on two table legs becomes an impromptu hurdle). Tanaka and his assistants experimented with these objects multiple times both indoors and in public, and their exploits were compiled into eight distinct video loops ranging in length from 1:19 – 1:50 minutes. Tanaka’s tightly-cropped framing of each scene often features the performers from the neck down or removes them from the shot altogether, thus focusing the viewer’s attention on the objects and the simple, repetitive acts being performed.
Tanaka’s work is deeply indebted to Minimalism as well as the legacies of Mono-ha and Arte Povera as evidenced by their shared interest in exploring the physicality and formal beauty of quotidian objects through processes of repetition and encounter. However, Tanaka’s lighthearted use of humor in this work is unique to the artist’s own generation of young Japanese artists emerging in the early 2000s. As critic Midori Matsui explains, “[r]esponding to the economic recession and limited opportunities of the time, they [Tanaka’s generation] turned to everyday life for moments of perceptual awakening. Using banal things in a playful way and documenting, by video, the isolated surfaces and movements of objects, Tanaka disrupts conventional relations between objects, treating them as mere things released from any utilitarian function or human intent and thereby evading prescribed ways of seeing the actual world.” [1]
[1] Midori Matsui, "Reviews, Koki Tanaka," Artforum, Summer no.10, 2009, 359-360.
Adapted from
Gabriel Ritter, DMA unpublished material.
NOTES
DMA unpublished material = Gabriel Ritter, "Koki Tanaka Justification." File on TAZ.
Including for reference the text from Two X Two catalogue, 12/5/18, CLC. (Not incorporating above as note was already completed.)
The work of Koki Tanaka takes shape primarily as video and installation that explores the relationship between objects and actions. His videos record simple gestures performed with ordinary objects—a knife cutting vegetables, beer poured into a glass, the opening of an umbrella—in which seemingly “nothing happens.” Yet, through their repetitive composition and heightened attention to detail, Tanaka’s videos compel us to take notice of the mundane phenomena of daily life. Latent patterns and geometrical forms emerge out of Tanaka’s work, and otherwise ordinary objects are transformed, providing an epiphany of sorts from moments of everyday life.
To create Everything Is Everything, Tanaka and two assistants spent a total of eight days recording their interactions and interventions with readily available items, including hangers, cups, towels, an air mattress, and toilet paper, all found around the city of Taipei. The physical properties of these objects were tested (a metal hanger is stretched to its breaking point) or their uses were expanded (a level placed on two table legs becomes an impromptu hurdle). Tanaka’s tightly cropped framing of each scene often features the performers from the neck down or removes them from the shot altogether, thus focusing the viewer’s attention on the objects and objects and the simple, repetitive acts being performed.
Excerpt from: Anna Katherine Brodbeck, ed., TWO X TWO X TWENTY: Two Decades Supporting Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art), 2018, 208-209.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
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Individuals
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RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
2012: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund, purchased from Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China.
AUDIO ASSETS
Curator Gabriel Ritter discusses this work, 58371031: UMO
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General Description
The eight-channel video installation, Everything is Everything, was first created for exhibition at the 2006 Taipei Biennial, curated by Dan Cameron. For this work, the artist and two assistants spent a total of eight days recording their interactions and interventions with readily available items, including hangers, cups, towels, an air mattress, and toilet paper, all found around the city of Taipei. The physical properties of these objects were tested (a metal hanger is stretched to its breaking point) or their uses were expanded (a level placed on two table legs becomes an impromptu hurdle). Tanaka and his assistants experimented with these objects multiple times both indoors and in public, and their exploits were compiled into eight distinct video loops ranging in length from 1:19 – 1:50 minutes. Tanaka’s tightly-cropped framing of each scene often features the performers from the neck down or removes them from the shot altogether, thus focusing the viewer’s attention on the objects and the simple, repetitive acts being performed.
Tanaka’s work is deeply indebted to Minimalism as well as the legacies of Mono-ha and Arte Povera as evidenced by their shared interest in exploring the physicality and formal beauty of quotidian objects through processes of repetition and encounter. However, Tanaka’s lighthearted use of humor in this work is unique to the artist’s own generation of young Japanese artists emerging in the early 2000s. As critic Midori Matsui explains, “[r]esponding to the economic recession and limited opportunities of the time, they [Tanaka’s generation] turned to everyday life for moments of perceptual awakening. Using banal things in a playful way and documenting, by video, the isolated surfaces and movements of objects, Tanaka disrupts conventional relations between objects, treating them as mere things released from any utilitarian function or human intent and thereby evading prescribed ways of seeing the actual world.” [1]
[1] Midori Matsui, "Reviews, Koki Tanaka," Artforum, Summer no.10, 2009, 359-360.
Adapted from
Gabriel Ritter, DMA unpublished material.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Notes
DMA unpublished material = Gabriel Ritter, "Koki Tanaka Justification." File on TAZ.
Including for reference the text from Two X Two catalogue, 12/5/18, CLC. (Not incorporating above as note was already completed.)
The work of Koki Tanaka takes shape primarily as video and installation that explores the relationship between objects and actions. His videos record simple gestures performed with ordinary objects—a knife cutting vegetables, beer poured into a glass, the opening of an umbrella—in which seemingly “nothing happens.” Yet, through their repetitive composition and heightened attention to detail, Tanaka’s videos compel us to take notice of the mundane phenomena of daily life. Latent patterns and geometrical forms emerge out of Tanaka’s work, and otherwise ordinary objects are transformed, providing an epiphany of sorts from moments of everyday life.
To create Everything Is Everything, Tanaka and two assistants spent a total of eight days recording their interactions and interventions with readily available items, including hangers, cups, towels, an air mattress, and toilet paper, all found around the city of Taipei. The physical properties of these objects were tested (a metal hanger is stretched to its breaking point) or their uses were expanded (a level placed on two table legs becomes an impromptu hurdle). Tanaka’s tightly cropped framing of each scene often features the performers from the neck down or removes them from the shot altogether, thus focusing the viewer’s attention on the objects and objects and the simple, repetitive acts being performed.
Excerpt from: Anna Katherine Brodbeck, ed., TWO X TWO X TWENTY: Two Decades Supporting Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art), 2018, 208-209.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
2012: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund, purchased from Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China.
AUDIO ASSETS
Curator Gabriel Ritter discusses this work, 58371031: UMO
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