Japanese artist Yutaka Sone (Tokyo, *1965) fuses art with nature, sport, performance, and entertainment.
His work defies easy categorization. Not only can it not be reduced to a single medium – Sone’s work encompasses sculpture, drawings, performance, and video – it is also difficult to locate culturally. Although Sone has spent a lot of time in Japan, primarily Tokyo, his work does not exploit this heritage. Nor does it aim to emulate strategies of western art. Rather it strives to create its own poetic vocabulary not connected to a particular culture, but to culture at large.
Sone, who now lives and works mainly in Los Angeles and Xiamen, has travelled extensively. His experience both of the places he has seen and the people he has met, his aim to unearth common ground between extremely diverse groups informs his work. Part of his sculptural work comprises of cities and sceneries carved into single, large blocks of marble.
The size and hardness of the marble sharply contradicts the meticulously carved details on its surface. On different blocks of marble Sone shows us a Los Angeles highway, a roller coaster, the city of Hong Kong or a ski elevator over the Swiss mountains tops. Carved into a timeless stillness, purified and almost abstracted by the stark beauty of the white material, these epitomes of bustling movement and energy are captured as a snapshot in time.
Dounble River Island, the main installation Yutaka Sone prepares for the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern furthers his physical and metaphorical journey towards an “unreachable place”. However, through Sone’s almost absurd attempt at something that “can never be realized”, viewers find themselves drawn into an unknown landscape – a place of deviance. Double River Island is an in-progress tabletop model that combines features of every topography and climate.
Sone’s love of snow and ski-ing, has brought him to his latest works, a series of snowflakes carved out of single pieces of natural crystal or marble. The artist microscopically examined a great number of snowflakes and discovered that no two flakes in the world are ever the same. He then started designing his own snowflakes, which, being different from all other snowflakes in the world, are not based on real models but could in principle be real models for future flakes. Most of Sone’s work is produced in his studio in Xiamen, where he works together with a team of Chinese craftsmen in a family-run a stone factory.
Sone’s work has been widely exhibited internationally. He participated in the Whitney Biennial, the Sydney Biennale, and the Yokohama Triennial, was part of the Cities on the Move exhibition (shown in the Louisiana Museum, Humblebaek; the Hayward Gallery, London; the Vienna Secession; and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, NY).
The show at the Kunsthalle Bern is the first institutional solo-exhibition of Yutaka Sone in Europe and takes part in a series of three highly different exhibitions the artist developed over the last six months. Together with the two other institutions involved in this series of exhibitions, i.e. the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and the Aspen Art Museum, the Kunsthalle Bern will publish a book on Sone’s work with texts Philippe Pirotte, Hanna Schouwink, Hamza Walker, Benjamin Weissman and Heidi Zuckermann Jacobson.
Opening events:
Friday, 09th June, 2006, 10.30am Press conference
Friday, 09th June, 2006, 2pm Artist talk for art students
Saturday 10th June, 2006, 1pm Opening
Sunday 11th June, 2006, 12am Excursion to Zürich, visit of the marble sculpture „Giant Snow Leopard“ of Yutaka Sone at the storage room of Möbel Transport AG (advance reservation required)
Guided tours:
Sunday 11th June, 2006, 2pm Public guided tour
Monday 12th June 2006, 5.30pm Special guided tour for teachers
Wednesday 14th June, 2006, 2pm Guided tour for senior visitors
Thursday 15th June 2006, 8pm Public guided tour
Tuesday 20th June, 2006, 12.30am Sanwichclub
Saturday 24th June, 2006, 1.30pm Tour of the galleries
Sunday 25th June, 2006, 2pm Public guided tour