EUGENE STUDIO / Eugene Kangawa

Painting

White Painting series, 2017
Canvas

Left: Critical, 2021 / Right: White Painting series, 2017
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“THE EUGENE Studio’s White Painting series (…) transforming the canvases into nomadic shrines to love and memory….White Painting series returns the monochrome to its iconic if uncertain place between a portal and a thing.”
Passion in Monochrome by David Geers (an art critic who contributes his writing to October and among other places)
“The canvas in the exhibit has no trace of paint or ink on it; however, it is impressed with the kisses of about 100 people. This work, which consists of asking randomly selected people around town– or by people in the specific community– to plant a kiss on the canvas, has been carried out in the USA, Mexico, Italy, Taiwan, Spain, and more, and the total kiss count has exceeded 600. Each canvas, empty as it may seem, is an aggregate record of the thoughts and feelings of people of different countries, regions, and faiths. ‘White Painting’ is a general title of this series, but each pieces is titled with the row of names of people who kiss on it.”

Statue

Image / Imagine #1 man, 2021
Statue

Image / Imagine #1 man, 2021
Sculputure

“No one has ever seen this sculpture―not even me. It has been in pitch darkness since the moment of its creation. I intend to keep it there forever.”
That sculpture was created in perfect darkness by the artist and a sculptor over a period of three months. Not even the artist has seen the completed work, and neither have any of the people involved in its presentation at this exhibition. No size or media information for the work has been revealed, and even the word “man” in the title only indicates that the sculpture depicts a person, with no specific gender intended.
A single sculpture, installed in a pitch-black space. Not even the most determined visitor peering into the gloom will ever perceive its form. In the room, you can also touch the sculputure #1 man.

Painting

Rainbow Painting series, 2021
Oil on canvas

Rainbow Painting series Group portrait (Surrounded surging crowd of people), 2021
Oil on canvas
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Rainbow Painting series, 2021
Oil on canvas
Installation view at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

What appears to be one, if closer inspection is
possible, also appears to be a teeming, jostling group, each member slightly different from the next, separated, yet side by side.
This place might be a continent or a country; it might be a virtual network.
In any case, it is beautiful.
Group Portrait
Needed now: Not individual portraits, I thought, but portraits of people-in-plural, of groups.

Painting

Light and shadow inside me, 2021
Aqueous dye on paper

Light and shadow inside me, 2021
Aqueous dye on paper
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Light and shadow inside me, 2021
Aqueous dye on paper
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“Fold a single painting and expose it to the sun. Light and shadow result. Where the sun shines, colors fade, but shadowy parts are protected.
This work, reminiscent of an impressionist painting, is a painting made with itself.
Painting, three-dimensional form, and solar burn as a primitive element in photography: these things unite and create, along with intermittent sun.”
at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2021

Installation

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror, Dimensions variable

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“If the sea level were to rise, this would be the first place to sink beneath the waves.
The current seabed is not beautiful; this pure white seabed is imagined.
Amid reality, an imaginary horizon reaches endlessly out.

When gazing into the distance, or leaving the eyes unfocused, the brain urges the work of imagining on.
I discovered this in works I created
When people look over the horizon or beyond the sky, expectation and awe are combined in their imagination: This, I believe, has been the case since the earliest times.

This is both a seabed (kaitei) and a sea-garden (kaitei); both by the sea (rinkai) and critical (rinkai).”

Installation

Goldrain, 2019
Particle

Goldrain, 2019
Particle
Goldrain, 2019
Particle
Sculpture

Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland., 2017
Ceramic, steel, wood, glass, ash, others

Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland., 2017
Ceramic, steel, wood, glass, ash, others

“Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland.” is a sculpture work made for the exhibition “1/2 Century later”. The work reproduced a pure white room in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and made it go through the process of destruction.Within a large glass case are dust-covered chairs, …

Painting, Drawing, Model

Everything reflects the shining light toward me, 2021
Oil on brass / Oil, wax oil pastel on brass / Oil, gouache, grease pencil on brass

Drawing #Double vision of a vase, 2021
Oil, wax oil pastel on brass
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Trace the images on a reflective surface and see the paths revealed. In the fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi discovered the technique of linear perspective this way; I discovered it by accident, 600 years later, in homemade furnishings of brass. That was the
beginning of this work.
What’s more, because patches of the brass were sanded away, the reflections automatically attenuated with distance. Thus did I come to grasp aerial perspective, as discovered by Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time as the concept of bokeh.
Reflections of scenes and subjects, captured from multiple angles, layered.
This group of sketches is a superimposition of reflections of notes and records and such. These drawings play a note-like role, but it seems to me they also include parts like multiview photographs with no camera.
This work accepts everything that is reflected in it.
Color, light, landscape, subject, environment, viewer.
It comes to be through elements that are outside itself.

Installation, object, video

Mr. Tagi’s room and dream # four-handed, 2014
Steel, wood, oil / wood, brass, glass, artificial leather, plaster

Mr. Tagi’s room and dream, 2014
nstallation, Performance Mixed media Dimensions variable
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Starting in 2012, for my college graduation work, I began work on a group of pieces on the theme “Imaginary sports history and moving bodies.” In retrospect, I encountered many different elements here: the
environment, probability, time, coincidence, gender, rules, and so on. I believe I was interested in the idea of a single community, in a similar way to that seen in my White
Paintings and Rainbow Paintings.

Video installation

Our dreams, 2021
Video installation (Super 35mm digital black and white film)
Mr. Keith Williams, Ms. Pika Lee 4mins. 48sec. loop

Our dreams, 2021
Video installation (Super 35mm digital black and white film)
Mr. Keith Williams, Ms. Pika Lee 4mins. 48sec. loop
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

I asked them to play Debussy’s Rêverie, “imagined, in their heads.”
After that I revised the song to match their fingers, alternately shown on video, cutting through air.
This is, in short, a long-distance four-handed performance.
Something to bind together two people with no relation to each other at all.
I feel this is a work of communication. In the sense that they could not have connected otherwise.
Among the works at this exhibition, this is the only one conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic, in June this year.

Installation

Mr. Tagi’s room and dream, 2014
Research, Installation, Performance Mixed media

Mr. Tagi’s room and dream, 2014
Research, Installation, Performance Mixed media
Mr. Tagi’s room and dream, 2014
Research, Installation, Performance Mixed media

“Research on the history of sports by a fictional sports scientist.”
“Mr. Tagi’s room and dream” are an installation work which is based on a distinctive research project to pursue the history of sports. This work explores the ideal status of sports / kinetic objects. Various academic societies cooperated in producing this work.
“Mr. Tagi’s room” is a theatrical installation where various objects are collected and arranged on the table and shelf retracing scattered keywords; accidentalness, chance, the origin of time– or domain, stadium– interlocution, exchange, aggregation, and gender. “Mr.Tagi’s dream” is a set of video works(produced along with workshop).

Video installation

from the future, 2012–2013
3 channel audio video installation Video, Still

from the future, 2012-2013
3 channel audio video installation Video, Still

“from the future” started by inviting a man from overseas who has no prior knowledge of the series of events in Fukushima. This is a video artwork filmed based on the imaginary story written and pictures taken there. Texts written by the visitor in broken English is shown in the video.

Sculpture

Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland., 2017
Ceramic, steel, wood, glass, ash, others

Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland., 2017
Ceramic, steel, wood, glass, ash, others
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland.” is a sculpture work made for the exhibition “1/2 Century later”. The work reproduced a pure white room in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and made it go through the process of destruction.Within a large glass case are dust-covered chairs, …

Sculpture

Regrading of stories, 2021
Glass, Grisaille, mud, enamel on canvas

B.U.R.I.A.L., 2021
Glass, Grisaille, mud, enamel on canvas
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Collapse, recover, regrade.
Take what is soiled, polish it up, shatter it fine, arrange it again.
When this work was complete, I recalled the Great Hanshin Earthquake that happened when I was five, and the recovery that followed.
Something like the asphalt on the ground that buried history and narrative. That’s how it looked to me.

Performance

Phantosia (Shikkoku (EN: Pitch darkness-noh) , 2019
Instruction, Installation

Phantosia (Shikkoku (EN: Pitch darkness-noh), 2019
Instruction, Installation
The National Art Center, Tokyo

Noh performance held in a pitch-darkness. Phantosia is an installation in which “noh performance will be held in a pitch-darkness.”
It was the first trial in thousands of years of noh’s history.

Installation

Agricultural Revolution 3.0, 2016
Installation, Mixed media

Agricultural Revolution 3.0, 2016
Installation, Mixed media

A research project on agriculture, biotechnology and a new garden city. This was held in multiple forms; research, installation and conversation.
Columbia University and University of Cambridge cooperated in the research and farmers, Wired, OMA NY, and more intellectual participated in the conference.

Painting

White Painting series, 2017
Canvas

White Painting series, 2017
Still from video

“THE EUGENE Studio’s White Painting series (…) transforming the canvases into nomadic shrines to love and memory….White Painting series returns the monochrome to its iconic if uncertain place between a portal and a thing.”
Passion in Monochrome by David Geers (an art critic who contributes his writing to October and among other places)
“The canvas in the exhibit has no trace of paint or ink on it; however, it is impressed with the kisses of about 100 people. This work, which consists of asking randomly selected people around town– or by people in the specific community– to plant a kiss on the canvas, has been carried out in the USA, Mexico, Italy, Taiwan, Spain, and more, and the total kiss count has exceeded 600. Each canvas, empty as it may seem, is an aggregate record of the thoughts and feelings of people of different countries, regions, and faiths. ‘White Painting’ is a general title of this series, but each pieces is titled with the row of names of people who kiss on it.”

Painting, Drawing, Model

Everything reflects the shining light toward me, 2021
Oil on brass / Oil, wax oil pastel on brass / Oil, gouache, grease pencil on brass

avobe: Drawing #Shine (in the forest in spring), 2021 / below: A maquette for drawing #It comes and goes, again and again, 2021
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Trace the images on a reflective surface and see the paths revealed. In the fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi discovered the technique of linear perspective this way; I discovered it by accident, 600 years later, in homemade furnishings of brass. That was the
beginning of this work.
What’s more, because patches of the brass were sanded away, the reflections automatically attenuated with distance. Thus did I come to grasp aerial perspective, as discovered by Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time as the concept of bokeh.
Reflections of scenes and subjects, captured from multiple angles, layered.
This group of sketches is a superimposition of reflections of notes and records and such. These drawings play a note-like role, but it seems to me they also include parts like multiview photographs with no camera.
This work accepts everything that is reflected in it.
Color, light, landscape, subject, environment, viewer.
It comes to be through elements that are outside itself.

Installation

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror, Dimensions variable

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“If the sea level were to rise, this would be the first place to sink beneath the waves.
The current seabed is not beautiful; this pure white seabed is imagined.
Amid reality, an imaginary horizon reaches endlessly out.

When gazing into the distance, or leaving the eyes unfocused, the brain urges the work of imagining on.
I discovered this in works I created
When people look over the horizon or beyond the sky, expectation and awe are combined in their imagination: This, I believe, has been the case since the earliest times.

This is both a seabed (kaitei) and a sea-garden (kaitei); both by the sea (rinkai) and critical (rinkai).”

Installation

This is also everything of this world, 2021
Tin

This is also everything of this world, 2017
Tin
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Installation

Mr. Tagi’s room and dream, 2014
Research, Installation, Performance Mixed media

Mr. Tagi’s room and dream, 2014
Research, Installation, Performance Mixed media

“Research on the history of sports by a fictional sports scientist.”
“Mr. Tagi’s room and dream” are an installation work which is based on a distinctive research project to pursue the history of sports. This work explores the ideal status of sports / kinetic objects. Various academic societies cooperated in producing this work.
“Mr. Tagi’s room” is a theatrical installation where various objects are collected and arranged on the table and shelf retracing scattered keywords; accidentalness, chance, the origin of time– or domain, stadium– interlocution, exchange, aggregation, and gender. “Mr.Tagi’s dream” is a set of video works(produced along with workshop).

Installation

Agricultural Revolution 3.0, 2016
Installation, Mixed media

Drawing; Model room for Agricultural Revolution 3.0, 2016
Drawing, Copper
Shiseido Gallery

A research project on agriculture, biotechnology and a new garden city. This was held in multiple forms; research, installation and conversation.
Columbia University and University of Cambridge cooperated in the research and farmers, Wired, OMA NY, and more intellectual participated in the conference.

Painting, Drawing, Model

Everything reflects the shining light toward me, 2021
Oil on brass / Oil, wax oil pastel on brass / Oil, gouache, grease pencil on brass

Everything reflects the shining light toward me, 2021
Drum: Mr. Tagi’s room and dream # four-handed, 2014
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Trace the images on a reflective surface and see the paths revealed. In the fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi discovered the technique of linear perspective this way; I discovered it by accident, 600 years later, in homemade furnishings of brass. That was the
beginning of this work.
What’s more, because patches of the brass were sanded away, the reflections automatically attenuated with distance. Thus did I come to grasp aerial perspective, as discovered by Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time as the concept of bokeh.
Reflections of scenes and subjects, captured from multiple angles, layered.
This group of sketches is a superimposition of reflections of notes and records and such. These drawings play a note-like role, but it seems to me they also include parts like multiview photographs with no camera.
This work accepts everything that is reflected in it.
Color, light, landscape, subject, environment, viewer.
It comes to be through elements that are outside itself.

Painting, Drawing, Model

Everything reflects the shining light toward me, 2021
Oil on brass / Oil, wax oil pastel on brass / Oil, gouache, grease pencil on brass

Magic hour (evening, forest drawing), 2021
Oil on brass
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Trace the images on a reflective surface and see the paths revealed. In the fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi discovered the technique of linear perspective this way; I discovered it by accident, 600 years later, in homemade furnishings of brass. That was the
beginning of this work.
What’s more, because patches of the brass were sanded away, the reflections automatically attenuated with distance. Thus did I come to grasp aerial perspective, as discovered by Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time as the concept of bokeh.
Reflections of scenes and subjects, captured from multiple angles, layered.
This group of sketches is a superimposition of reflections of notes and records and such. These drawings play a note-like role, but it seems to me they also include parts like multiview photographs with no camera.
This work accepts everything that is reflected in it.
Color, light, landscape, subject, environment, viewer.
It comes to be through elements that are outside itself.

Installation

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror, Dimensions variable

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“If the sea level were to rise, this would be the first place to sink beneath the waves.
The current seabed is not beautiful; this pure white seabed is imagined.
Amid reality, an imaginary horizon reaches endlessly out.

When gazing into the distance, or leaving the eyes unfocused, the brain urges the work of imagining on.
I discovered this in works I created
When people look over the horizon or beyond the sky, expectation and awe are combined in their imagination: This, I believe, has been the case since the earliest times.

This is both a seabed (kaitei) and a sea-garden (kaitei); both by the sea (rinkai) and critical (rinkai).”

Painting, Drawing, Model

Everything reflects the shining light toward me, 2021
Oil on brass / Oil, wax oil pastel on brass / Oil, gouache, grease pencil on brass

Drawing #Double vision of a vase, 2021
Oil, wax oil pastel on brass

Trace the images on a reflective surface and see the paths revealed. In the fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi discovered the technique of linear perspective this way; I discovered it by accident, 600 years later, in homemade furnishings of brass. That was the
beginning of this work.
What’s more, because patches of the brass were sanded away, the reflections automatically attenuated with distance. Thus did I come to grasp aerial perspective, as discovered by Leonardo da Vinci, at the same time as the concept of bokeh.
Reflections of scenes and subjects, captured from multiple angles, layered.
This group of sketches is a superimposition of reflections of notes and records and such. These drawings play a note-like role, but it seems to me they also include parts like multiview photographs with no camera.
This work accepts everything that is reflected in it.
Color, light, landscape, subject, environment, viewer.
It comes to be through elements that are outside itself.

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror, Dimensions variable

Critical, 2021
Water, sand, mirror
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

“If the sea level were to rise, this would be the first place to sink beneath the waves.
The current seabed is not beautiful; this pure white seabed is imagined.
Amid reality, an imaginary horizon reaches endlessly out.

When gazing into the distance, or leaving the eyes unfocused, the brain urges the work of imagining on.
I discovered this in works I created
When people look over the horizon or beyond the sky, expectation and awe are combined in their imagination: This, I believe, has been the case since the earliest times.

This is both a seabed (kaitei) and a sea-garden (kaitei); both by the sea (rinkai) and critical (rinkai).”