Oki Hiroyuki UMU/OMU 1 2005- video

ARATANIURANO 3A 2-2-5 Shintomi Chuo-ku 104-0041 Tokyo Japan (city map) Send E-mail tel +81 (0)3-3555-0696 www.arataniurano.com

Hiroyuki Oki
The Dawn of 21st Century Philosophy - Fiction 3

October 4 (Sat) - November 8 (Sat), 2008

ARATANIURANO is pleased to announce that from October 4 to November 8, it will be holding Hiroyuki Oki's solo exhibition "The Dawn of 21st Century Philosophy - Fiction 3".

Hiroyuki Oki started to make video work in the late 1980s, while he was studying at the Department of Architecture in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. From 1991 he was based in Kochi Prefecture, and following key early works such as "Tarch Trip" (1992-93), his work "HEAVEN-6-BOX" (1994-95) won the NETPAC Prize at the 45th Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin in 1995. Thereafter he has been invited to show at many film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, where his work has been received with great critical acclaim. His work is not limited to video, however: it encompasses live screenings, installation, bodily performance, drawing and painting, and he has taken part in many exhibitions in Japan and abroad. Having been featured in "Art/Domestic Temperature of the Time" (Setagaya Art Museum) in 1999, "GAME OVER" (Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000), "How Latitudes Become Forms" (Walker Art Center, USA, 2003), "Roppongi Crossing" (Mori Art Museum, 2004), the Sharjah Biennial (2007), "Out of the Ordinary" (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA, 2007), and "The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop" (Art Tower Mito, 2007), Oki is an increasingly recognized figure in the contemporary art scene.

Oki, who studied architecture at university, says:
"Even now I consider myself an architect. The kind of architecture I want to create is a general means of expression that incorporates people's lives and the relationships between them, and it is in trying to activate this idea that I have come to consider film. Films are capable of handling any variety of subject matter, from people and objects to time, so it is close to my conception of architecture."

The six video works that are on display in this exhibition present an outline of his activity of the past five years. Shot over long periods of time in locations and communities as diverse as China, Tibet, Arizona, Israel, Kochi, Hokkaido and Tokyo, these video works show people's livelihoods, religions and politics, the beauty of nature, the urban environment, midnight monologues, the laughing faces of youth, music and sexuality - myriad instants of daily life that, finely edited into a distinctive, musical score-like time-sheet, and using techniques such as overlapping, close-ups and overexposure, have been poetically woven together to create a unique sense of floatation and tension.

Oki says that he would like to create opportunities for people to start afresh with a 21st century philosophy, and that this is best achieved with video.

We hope that you will take the opportunity to see this compilation of Hiroyuki Oki's work and the fresh points of departure on offer in this exhibition.