WAITINGROOM (Tokyo) is pleased to announce “Sunlight Announcements,” the first solo exhibition by Asako Fujikura at the gallery, from September 14 (Sat) to October 20 (Sun), 2024. Fujikura, who focuses on the depth of the infrastructure developed across urban and suburban areas and the landscapes associated with it, creates her works mainly using 3D computer graphics animation techniques. In recent years she has explored the intersections between her fictional imagination and social structures that exist in reality, in “Vanpool over the Cliff in the Foreground” (2022, Tokyo Bay), a logistics-type exhibition that Fujikura independently planned based on her interest in landfills and logistics; “Fixing Garden” (2022- with Takahiro Ohmura), which involved the renovation of an abandoned house using 3D computer graphics; and “Impact Tracker” (2023, Aomori Contemporary Art Center), which is set in Aomori Prefecture and addresses the issue of energy production in the hinterland. This exhibition, Fujikura’s first solo show in three years, showcases new video works and flat sculptures in an installation space based on the themes of “sunlight” and “announcements,” which have been at the root of her creative activities and consistently incorporated into her works.

《Sunlight Announcements》main visual

About the artist, Asako Fujikura
Born in 1992 in Saitama, currently lives and works in Ibaraki. Graduated from the school of Foreign Language, majoring in South and West Asia Program, department of Persian at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in 2016, and M.A. degree from the Department of New Media, Graduate School of Film and New Media, at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2018. With the theme of finding the primitive haunting nature that exists in contemporary cities, the artist creates urban landscapes using a 3DCG animation technique that emphasizes images with a focus on artificial textures and tactile qualities, and also installation work that brings motifs appearing in videos into the real world. Recent exhibitions include “A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection” (2024, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo), “Invisibles in the Neo City” (2023, SusHi Tech Square, Tokyo), “MOT Annual 2023 – Synergies, or between creation and generation” (2023, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo), “Energies in the Rural” (2023, Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Aomori), “NMWA Japan Committee: New Worlds” (2022, M5 GALLERY, Tokyo), and a solo exhibition “Paradise for Free” (2021, CALM & PUNK GALLERY, Tokyo). Fujikura has been selected as a project member for the Japanese pavilion exhibition “IN-BETWEEN — A Future with Generative AI” at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia scheduled to be held in 2025. Major public collections include Takahashi Ryutaro collection (Tokyo, Japan), and the Taguchi Art Collection (Tokyo, Japan)

Artist Statement
Announcements appear to us suddenly at particular moments in our daily lives, and are perceived through structures (devices) such as walls and monuments that straddle the space between the sun, the land that it illuminates, and the life that inhabits that land. The sunlight on an exterior wall and the shadows it creates, for example, make us believe that the sun will rise again tomorrow. At the same time, however, these shadows gradually shift with the changing of the seasons. The view that the observer encounters casually on a daily basis is also connected to an intuitive sense of a vast cosmic picture, like the gap between the solar cycle and that of the Earth.

The sense of endlessness that accompanies the perception of these announcements has been the subject of my work. This endlessness is a latent presence in everyday scenery, like the grass growing in the shadows behind a wall, a portion of a mesh fence in the suburbs, or a pebble that falls between the asphalt and the curb at the foot of a streetlamp.

Since ancient times, shadow-casting devices have been produced all around the world, including the gnomon, a stick set in the center of a horizontal dial that served both as a sundial for measuring the time at which the sun crosses the meridians, and a device for measuring the altitude of the sun. The gnomon marks and fixes announcements to the ground. I believe these localized traces that articulate what we call “time” are primordial images.

Asako Fujikura (August 2024)

Connecting to the world by looking closely, restoring and healing the human spirit
Asako Fujikura was born and raised in the suburbs of Saitama Prefecture, on the outskirts of the Kanto region, where homogeneous residential areas spread out around train stations, with fields stretching far into the distance, while huge highways cut through these seemingly rustic rural landscapes. Fujikura was intrigued by the sight of structures and machines of immeasurable size and gravity amid the endless expanse of these inorganic landscapes. One day, she suddenly had the feeling that the landscape was akin to a desert, sparking her interest in giant structures and paradises that suddenly rise up from the desert. Subsequently, Fujikura then entered the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies instead of an art college, where she majored in Persian, a somewhat unusual career choice. The unique way of perceiving “depth” in Islamic mystical thought that she learned while at university had a profound influence on her. After graduation, she entered the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts, where she began producing art by creating 3D computer generated imagery of the internal images that stem from her interest in Islamic mysticism and vast landscapes.

The sunlight and announcements that are the themes of this exhibition emerged from Fujikura’s childhood experiences of staring at the textures of the landscapes that surrounded her, and have been consistently incorporated into her work as important elements up until the present. In response to the excessive consumerism of contemporary society and the transient movements of information and objects, Fujikura has tried to discover some kind of essential rule, movement, color, or shape by staying where she is and simply staring at the shadows on buildings or the surface of walls. Over the course of this “staring work,” she finds shadows in the sunlight, and thanks to the changing length of the shadows, she is able to perceive the height of the sun and discover an “announcement” that tomorrow is coming. In this way, Fujikura’s own personal experience of finding a way to connect with the world by looking closely at the scenery around her in her daily life, perceiving various “announcements” that help the human mind and spirit to recover and heal, forms the basis of the works on display at this exhibition. In the exhibition space, visitors will find three sculptures (two of them relief-type flat sculptures) that express elements of various “announcements,” while motifs contained in these sculptures will occasionally appear in the new video work projected on the large display. In addition, a number of models that seek to conceptualize situations where sunlight is announced, as well as the sunlight announcements themselves, will be installed on the stage and walls within the space. By experiencing the various forms of “sunlight” and “announcements” created by Fujikura, we hope that this exhibition will become an opportunity to embark on a collaborative exploration of the possibilities of restoring and healing the mind and spirit and bringing “communication that goes beyond words, time, and distance” to human beings who have devoted themselves to the endless pursuit of evolution and progress since the modernization of Japan.

left : “Midway Stone” 2021, Iron container, bollard, hemp rope, video, QR code, FRP stone, Dimension variable, Photo/ Akira Arai（Nacása&Partners Inc.）
right : “The Light from Outstanding Billboards” 2022, Single channel video with sound (Full HD), 8min.44sec., Video still

[Concurrent exhibitions]
Group Exhibition “A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection”
Dates: 8/3, 2024 – 11/10, 2024
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Exhibition Gallery 1F/B2F (Tokyo)
More Info: https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/exhibitions/TRC/

Group Exhibition ”Taguchi Art Collection + Hirosaki Museum Contemporary Art – How Did You Come into the World?”
Dates: 9/27, 2024 – 3/9, 2025
Venue: Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art (Aomori)
More Info: https://www.hirosaki-moca.jp/exhibitions/how-did-you-come-into-the-world/