Tokyo, Japan – waitingroom is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Masayuki HARADA “Not knowing that it was yesterday” from January 31st (Sat.) to March 8th (Sun), 2015. He is an emerging artist who creates installation works, using furnitures, home electronics, plants, foods and any other daily materials. He attempts to function these daily materials as totally different applications and adapt the exhibiting space into the surreal experience. In this exhibition, he shows new installation work which uses furnitures and beans as main materials as well as several drawings for production. This would be our first time to exhibit HARADA’s work at our gallery and we are also participating in an area partnership program of Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions which happens through February 27th to March 8th.

Left: Koganecho Bazaar 2014, 2014, installation, photo by Yasuyuki Kasaki, courtesy of Koganecho Bazaar 2014
Right: The 13th Exhibition of the Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art, 2010, TARO OKAMOTO MUSEUM OF ART, Kanagawa

Masayuki HARADA was born in Tokyo in 1978. He graduated from the Department of Sculpture, College of Art and Design, at Musashino Art University in 2009 and finished his MFA program at Sculpture Course, Graduate School of Art and Design, at Musashino Art University in 2011. He focuses on creating a chance to realize small but interesting phenomenon in our daily life, by changing ordinary moment to unique and humorous situation through his installation work. His recent exhibitions include “Koganecho Bazaar 2014” (2014, Koganecho, Kanagawa), a solo exhibition “Only once three days before” (2013, GalleryAn Asukayama, Tokyo), group exhibition “Okutama Opening Exhibition” (2012, National Museum of Art, Okutama, Tokyo), and a solo exhibition “Osoraku-issunmae. Aruiha-issunnsaki-no” (2011, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo). Additionally, he will have simultaneous solo exhibition “temper” at Art Center Ongoing through February 18th to March 1st, 2015.

Left: “Osoraku Issun-mae, aruiwa issun-sakino” 2011, installation (Venue: Art Center Ongoing)
Right: TERATOTERA, 2012, Tokyo

HARADA showed very busy installation with lots of movement and sound coming from the home electronics and furnitures controlled by his own system in his recent show at Koganecho Bazaar 2014. In this exhibition at waitingroom, he choose small “beans” as his materials and creates very surreal situation with a small movement of those beans in the space. Those beans are stored in the plastic containers that we use in our daily life and they fall off constantly to the floor. The repetition of these movements will create the mixture of different kinds of beans in the space as time goes by. HARADA says that this image of mixed beans are like “the mixed nationalities with different color of skin, eyes, hair and blood and they also look like the mixture of different kinds of stars we can see from the planet”. It also seems like a microcosm of our society where different kinds of people live together, however, there are no right and wrong (or good and evil) and it is just shown as “the way it is”.

”Our everyday life is the continuous repetition. Sleeping, doing the laundry, taking a bath, putting the shoes on and so on. Most of these actions are going to be forgotten without taking accounts of.
Most of these repetitions deal with the food, clothing and housing. For example, let’s focus on the aspect of food. If you drop the food off, you might pick it up or trash it out and try to clean up the situation in any way. However, I imagined that there might be some interesting elements in this moment. The result is just in front of us. (Masayuki HARADA)”

Most of the phenomenons will usually be forgotten, but if they show up differently in front of us, we might feel something special in the repetition of everyday life. On earth, what is the meaning of this “repetition”? We might find an important factor which is hidden in an “ordinary situation” through “consciously-fabricated repetition”.
In this exhibition, HARADA showcases the new installation work that several cut-off furnitures are placed in the space and the plastic containers with the beans are on each furnitures. In addition to that, there will be 5-7 drawings that were made during his production of the installation. Please come and see the microcosm in our everyday life created by HARADA through his installation.

drawing#0, 2014, watercolor and pen on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm
drawing#04, 2014, pen on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm