Crosspoint at the Kagawa Museum

 

Crosspoint is an art exhibit that is currently taking place at the Kagawa Museum in Takamatsu. It started last week-end and will be there until June 4th. If you’re in Kagawa during that period, I warmly advise you to stop by and check it out.

Crosspoint is the gathering of 20 artists from the Kagawa Prefecture, all together in the same place. A rare opportunity to discover local artists (though not all are based in Kagawa). While Art Setouchi is an amazing endeavor – if you know this blog you already know that – it sometimes tend to overshadow the fact that Kagawa Prefecture is striving with local artists. So, this exhibit is a great opportunity to discover a few of them.

Here are some pictures of some of the art that is showcased there. Please, excuse the poor quality of most of them, the lighting of the rooms is not always ideal for pictures.

 

Atsushi Yamaberi

It was good to see Yamaberi-san after such a long time (he was one of the original members of Onba Factory in 2010, and he also took part in Bengal Island in 2013 – despite running into him in the street a couple of years ago, I hadn’t seen him since then.

 

Eiichi Tsujino

I don’t know Eiichi Tsujino, but I really really liked his sculptures. Looking forward to see more.

 

Junko Yoda

Ms Yoda is originally from Kagawa but moved to New York a little more than 40 years ago. She regularly returns to Kagawa. It’s the first time I met her and saw her art. I really like it.

 

Miki Iwasato

Cute and fun…

 

Takuya Kamiike

I find this shipwreck completely fascinating and beautiful. It reminds me of a similar boat on Oshima. I wonder if Mr. Kamiike did that one too.

 

Tetsuya Noguchi

Mr Noguchi’s statuettes were mind-blowing. Most of them are very small, no more than a dozen centimeters high, but they’re so detailed, precise and almost life-like (even the ones that depict dead people – I think they’re dead). It almost feel like real people from ancient times that have been artificially (and magically) shrunk.

 

Toshihisa Fudezuka

 

Yoichiro Kamei

 

Yoichiro Yoda

It was good to see Yoichiro Yoda again. He made the trip from New York to introduce us two of his paintings that deal with his favorite themes: movies and old New York (one of them finds its inspiration from the Great Gatsby and the other one from Coney Island). If you attended the Setouchi Triennale last year and loved Island Theater Megi, he’s the one you should thank.

 

Yuji Sato

I’ve never met Yuji Sato, but I met his art for the first time a few years ago. I gotta say, I really like it.

 

And we finish with my good friend:

Yoshifumi Oshima

He introduced us to some of his artworks, some pretty old, some brand new and made for the exhibit.

Oshima-san’s art has the particularity to often be playful and always “usable”. There were a “insect merry-go-round”, a “dragonfly scooter”, a “grasshopper tricycle that goes in circles) and some onba he made on Ogijima over the past seven years. The one with Ebisu having a lot of meaning. It is one of the very first “My Onba” made, and it belonged to the couple who used to own the building that is now Onba Factory and Onba Café. In other words, allowing Oshima-san to install his Onba Factory project there was the first step of so many of the things that happened afterwards on Ogijima. Sadly, the husband died unexpectedly about a year ago. I got to ride his boat last Fall, an unforgettable experience. I wonder what has happened to his wife. Until recently, I used to see her onba in the streets of the island, but recently it has been stationed in Onba Factory and now it is part of the exhibit. I’m afraid she has left the island and went to live with her children or something like that.

I hope those few pictures and lines made you want to visit the exhibit. Remember, Crosspoint is until June 4th at the Kagawa Museum. Enjoy!