April 2012

qwatz contemporary art platform hosts the Japanese artist Koki Tanaka, selected as one of the participants to the project “The Human Factor”.

His works asks to reconsider the way we look at the world of ordinary objects and actions, and the accidental relations which we “universally” behold with our material surroundings and physical environments. This artist’s practice is characterized by performative processes informing not only the coming together of complex installations but becoming also their constitutive materials. Tanaka populates his world and his art works with unexpected configurations, engaging unusual and original dispositives of deconstruction.

He was born in Tochigi, Japan, in 1975; he lives between Tokyo and Los Angeles. He represents Japan at the Venice Biennal 2013. His work has been exhibited in different international context as the Witte de With in Rotterdam and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, in 2011; Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, in 2009; the Gwangju Biennal in 2008; the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard in 2007; the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, in 2006; the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, in 2004. His art works are collected in several Japanese museums such as the MOT (Museum of Contemporary Art), at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in France and the Asian Society and Museum in New York.

Thanks to the Japan Foundation to support the artist’s residency.

Koki Tanaka is Artist of the Year Deutsche Bank 2015 and He presents his first major solo show at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle the same year.

---

Image: “A Piano Played by Five Pianists at Once (First Attempt)”, 2012
Video installation, HD video, Two drawings (24″ x 19″ each), temporary walls. Created with University Art Galleries, University of California, Irvine | Image courtesy of the artist, Vitamin creative space, Guangzhou and Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo