Artist talk – Aiko Tezuka

About

Tezuka’s creative practice, though grounded in painting, has long found expression in intricate fabric installations and objects that explore themes related to the culture, industry, and history of the global textile enterprise. Processes of weaving and unweaving function to characterize both the artist‘s trademark aesthetic and her particular thematic preoccupations; as she articulates in her artist’s statement, she is “interested in loosening up such readymade nar¬ratives to unravel forgotten histories or discover new plotlines,” and in so doing “facilitate the reexamination of the subjective nature of time and the process of metamorphosis.” In “Dear Oblivion,” Tezuka further explores these ideas with a critical emphasis on the deconstruction, reexamination, and reconstruction of the relationships between past and present, Japan and Western Europe, and art and craft. (Text by Patrick J. Reed)

*Dr. Alexander Hofmann studied East-Asian and European Art History as well as Japanology at the Universität Heidelberg and Japanese Language and Art History at the Universities of Waseda and Gakushūin in Tokyo. Since the summer of 2004 he has been curator for Art from Japan at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin. In this function, he has organized several exhibitions on traditional and contemporary art from Japan, such as „Kunst aus Japan – die Sammlung John C. Weber, New York“ (2006), „Tiger, Kraniche, schöne Frauen – Asiatische Kunst aus der Sammlung Klaus F. Naumann“ (2015). His interests are focussed on the questions of representation, the construction of beauty ideals as well as social, economic and institutional aspects of art in Japan.

*Louisa Elderton is a freelance writer, editor and critic living in Berlin, specialising in art and contemporary culture. Since 2016 she has been Project Editor of Phaidon’s ‘Vitamin’ series — she was the Project Editor for "Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art" (2019), in which Aiko Tezuka was featured. She too is the Managing Editor of Gropius Bau’s forthcoming Lee Mingwei exhibition catalogue (2020). As the Content Editor of Phaidon's "Great Women Artists" (2019), she commissioned the writing for the most extensive book of women artists ever published.