IF THE SNAKE: Okayama Art Summit 2019 Opens

This fall the triennial Okayama Art Summit returns under the artistic direction of French artist Pierre Huyghe. Open to the public from September 27 through November 24, the exhibition will be on view in the center of Okayama City and in a number of historic and cultural venues, including the building of former Uchisange Elementary School, Tenjinyama Cultural Plaza of Okayama Prefecture, Okayama Orient Museum, Okayama Castle, and Hayashibara Museum of Art among others.
 
The second edition of the Summit builds on the rich historical legacy and cultural heritage of the city. Okayama sits within western Japan’s Setouchi region, which is increasingly recognized as a cultural hub for such art attractions as the Ohara Museum of Art, the Naoshima “art island,” and the popular contemporary art festival Setouchi Triennale, whose fourth edition partly coincides with the Okayama Art Summit in September and October 2019.
 
In the crowded field of art biennales and triennales, Okayama Art Summit, whose inaugural edition in 2016 was directed by UK artist Liam Gillick, stands out as an experimential exhibition directed by internationally renowned artists. This year, Huyghe presents the Summit under the title “IF THE SNAKE,” promising to challenge visitors to rethink what constitutes art exhibitions.

“IF THE SNAKE” is a living entity, through which navigate a heterogeneity of chemical, biological and algorithmic processes, as well as different intelligent life forms. Each feature within this situated entity have inherently dynamic qualities that, due to the conditions of their co-presence, endlessly grow as particular and contingent modes of continuity. This infant complex system is prompt to spontaneous order, self-generating, material with consciousness, shifting meaning, constantly modifying its plasticity in total indifference to any potential witness. The exhibition appears as merely one hypothesis of its existence amidst many. 

"IF THE SNAKE" is not a portrait, comprised of various facets. Nor is it a ghost in the machine, an animism whose sensible presence relies exclusively on human attribution or values. It is self-representing and still eschews representation. A naturalization of odd, artificial otherness: a morphogenesis of a weirding subject. 

To depart consensual reality, bound by the "known", requires the speculative aspect of fiction to reach worlds thought as impossible, to playfully imagine what they could be, then concretely actualize them. This pointless topology is an overflow of porous fictions, a crossfade in a state of uncertainty, a continuum of unstable formalizations of possibilities. 

"IF THE SNAKE"

Exhibition Dates
Friday, September 27 to Sunday, November 24, 2019 (51 days)
Closed: Mondays [except for October 14 (Monday, holiday) and November 4 (Monday, holiday) in which the following Tuesdays will be closed]
 
Venues
Former Uchisange Elementary School, Tenjinyama Cultural Plaza of Okayama Prefecture, Okayama Orient Museum, Okayama Castle, Hayashibara Museum of Art among others
 
Management structure
Organizer: Okayama Art Summit Executive Committee (Okayama City, Ishikawa Foundation, and Okayama Prefecture)
Chairman: Masao Omori, Mayor of Okayama City
Executive Producer: Yasuharu Ishikawa, President, Ishikawa Foundation
Executive Director: Taro Nasu, Owner/Director, TARO NASU
Artistic Director: Pierre Huyghe, Artist
Public Program Director: Chieko Kinoshita, Associate Professor, Osaka University
 
Pierre Huyghe
Born in 1962, Paris. Lives in New York.
Huyghe’s works often present themselves as complex systems characterised by a wide range of life forms, inanimate things and technologies. His constructed organisms combine not only biological, technological and fictional elements, they also produce an immersive, constantly changing environment, in which humans, animals and nonbeings learn, evolve and grow. In 2001, he received a Special Award from the Jury of the Venice Biennale. He was also awarded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize in 2002. In 2017, Huyghe was awarded the Nasher Prize for Sculpture. Recent major projects /solo exhibitions include “UUmwelt” at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2018), “After Alife Ahead” at Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), “The Roof Garden Commission” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(2015), “A Season Dedicated to Pierre Huyghe” at The Artist Institute, New York (2014). In 2013-2014, a major retrospective of Huyghe’s work travelled from the Centre Pompidou, Paris to the Ludwig Museum, Cologne and to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions including "Tino Sehgal" at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016), "Saltwater: A Theory of Thought Forms" at the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), “dOCUMENTA 13” in Kassel (2012) among others.

Quelle: FITZ & CO