想像はさらに広がる。アニエスベーがポスターやルックブック、パンフレットやリーフレット、フリーペーパー、ちょっとしたカードなど、さまざまな印刷物をよく作ることがわかり、それが洋服と同じようにブランドの世界観を伝えていると私には思えた。数日後、本展を担当するアニエスべー ジャパンの古宇田リヴォー朱美さんの誘いで、京都祗園にできた新しいコンセプトショップの内覧会に日帰りで足を運び、洋服だけでなく、カフェが併設され、棚には小物や文具が並び、壁にはアートが設置された内装を見て、その感触は確信に変わった。とくに気になったのがノートやメモパッドである。トゥルブレの言葉で「bon voyage!」とあるように、それらは旅先で思いや考えをかき留めるのに最適のメディウムだ。私は個展ごとになるべくカタログを作る。こうして展覧会カタログであり、実用的なノートでもある両義的な出版物のアイデアが浮かんだ。

そこからは速かった。外観でノートだと分かるにはリング製本がよい。スパイラルに関心があるため、スパイラルリングだとなおよい。作品もカタログのページに見立て、パンチで穴を開けた半透明のプレートに貼り、スパイラルリングをつけて額装する。リング製本に背表紙はない。そこで鉛筆に本展のタイトルを印字して、それをノート兼カタログに付帯させ、背表紙とする。こうして印刷、ノート、リング、鉛筆、スパイラルと思考が連鎖し、プロジェクトを形成する概念のネットワークができた。結果として展覧会とカタログが並行して構想され、双方向に編み込まれ、密接にリンクすることになった。カタログはふつう先行する展覧会のドキュメントだが、本展では展覧会の空間とカタログの空間が補完し合っている。むしろカタログを作るなかで生じたページの試作を、作品として展示しているような感覚すらある。

展覧会とカタログが融合し、カタログがノートでもあること。出版物ではなく、実用的な文具として流通すること。ノートの使用者がそこに文字をかき込むとき、それは展覧会を記録したアーカイブの空間に交差し、そこに新しい意味のさざなみが生じる―そうした多義的にゆらぐ事象のつらなりが、展覧会を超えてスパイラルのように広がればと思う。

 
Venue: agnès b. galerie boutique
2F, 5-7-25 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Date: June 17th – July 30th, 2023 (open every day)
Opening hours: 12:00 – 20:00

Production cooperation: Toshiki Koike/Tokyoheihan Co.,Ltd.
Cooperation: Takuro Someya Contemporary Art
PR cooperated by: YN Associates
Installation: Kenzo Kasuya

agnès b. gallery boutique will hold Enrico Isamu Oyama’s solo exhibition “Notes Rings Spirals” from June 17th (Sat) to July 30th (Sun).

Enrico Isamu Oyama is known for works incorporating his iconic motif “Quick Turn Structure (QTS)” across different mediums, while also exploring advanced expressiveness in street art, which has led to the publication of his own books and numerous contributions to various media outlets. He has painstakingly traced the trajectory of this genre, which has long been overlooked in Japanese art scene, and has accumulated a valuable archive. In the special issue of renowned Japanese art magazine “Bijutsu-Techo,” entitled “SIGNALS! Resonating Imagination of Graffiti” (published in June 2017 by Bijutsu Shuppan), which Oyama supervised, the relationship between agnès b. and Futura 2000 is documented through an interview with Futura 2000 himself.

Gallery du Jour, agnès b.’s gallery opened in Paris in 1984, has been inviting many artists who use the streets as their creative space since its inception. Understanding street culture deeply, Oyama has incorporated concept sheets created by agnès b. in the 34 artworks he produced for this exhibition. It is not merely about leaving traces of the brand in the artwork. The layering of invisible compositional elements, such as the original images printed on the sheets or the presence of different images on the back, evokes a sense of depth over time. Additionally, the images of QTS are also overlaid on these layers, and alongside them, the newly discovered motif by Oyama for this exhibition, the spiral ring, is attached on the left side of each piece. This creates an even more intricate and abundant space in the artworks.

Prior to the opening of this exhibition, Ōyama’s Quick Turn Structure has appeared on the facade of agnès b. Shibuya store (6-19-14 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo) since June 8th. We invite you to take a look at it as well.

Artist Statement

For the current exhibition I wanted to create works in response to the occasion. agnès b. minimizes waste in aiming at sustainable practices and also archives specific printed documents. This was the first thing I wanted to draw on. Past exhibition posters and look-books become records of the themes of a given season. I was specifically looking for materials that might reflect the brand’s overall philosophy and came across a case of folded paper. Inside was a set of 34 sheets of A5 paper revealing something of the brand’s philosophy, printed with various statements by the brand founder Agnès Troublé and decorated with related visuals on one side and the brand logo on the other. I remembered my friend graphic designer Toshiki Koike had told me about Tokyo Heihan printshop in Kagurazaka, where it was possible to use an old offset print press. So I had the idea of using the print press to create a kind of collaborative print work by printing Quick Turn Structure onto these 34 sheets.

From here, the idea expanded. I had a feeling that the various posters, look-books, pamphlets, leaflets, flyers, small cards, and the like, which agnès b. creates could be expressive of the brand’s philosophy as much as the clothes themselves. When I visited the new concept store in Gion, Kyoto, on a day trip some time later, at the invitation of the exhibition curator Akemi Kouda-Riveau from agnès b. Japan, this feeling turned to conviction. I saw indeed that it was not only about the clothes; there was a café in the store, small objects and stationary on the shelves, and art decorating the walls. What particularly caught my eyes were the notebooks and memo pads. With Troublé’s words bon voyage! in mind, I took these to be mediums for jotting down thoughts and ideas while traveling. Whenever I have a solo exhibition, I always create a catalogue. This is how I came up with the idea of printing an exhibition catalogue that could also practically serve as a notebook.

From there, things developed quite quickly. I decided to use ring binding so that it would be obvious from the outset that it was a notebook. I specifically wanted to use spiral rings as I had a preexisting interest in spiral forms. I also chose to present the print works in the form of individual catalogue pages by pasting each of the 34 sheets onto a thin translucent plate with holes punched in the side. I then put spiral rings through the holes. All these elements combined into an artwork to be framed. A ring-bound notebook doesn’t have a spine, so I decided to print the exhibition title on a pencil which could then be attached to the notebook and serve as a spine. This was how I created the conceptual network for the project: the interconnected ideas of the printing, the notebook, the rings, the pencil and the spirals. As a result, the exhibition and its catalogue were conceived in parallel and closely interlinked, one feeding into the other. A catalogue is usually produced as a retrospective documentation of an exhibition, but in this case the space of the exhibition and the space of the catalogue were designed to complement one another. It was as though the prototype of a catalogue page became the work of art to be exhibited.

In these ways, the catalogue and exhibition are fused as one entity, with the catalogue also serving as a notebook. The latter was designed to be distributed not as a publication but as a piece of practical stationary. When a user of the notebook writes inside it, it enters into the space of an archival record of the exhibition, producing waves of new meaning—my hope is that this chain of fluctuating and multi-faceted phenomena will spiral out far beyond the exhibition itself.

Artist Profile

Enrico Isamu Oyama (b.1983, Italian / Japanese) creates visual art in various mediums that features Quick Turn Structure; the motif composed of spontaneous repetition and expansion of free-flowing lines informed by aerosol writing of 1970’s-80’s New York and beyond. After attending MFA at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2007-09, he named the motif Quick Turn Structure, and has positioned his practice in the midst of contemporary art and street culture. Oyama stayed in New York for 6 months in 2011-2012 as a grantee of Asian Cultural Council. He went on to live and work in Brooklyn during the 2010s. Oyama held solo exhibitions internationally at institutions including Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation (London), Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art (Kansas), Pola Museum of Art (Hakone), Nakamura Keith Haring Collection (Yamanashi), Tower 49 Gallery (New York), Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery (Yokohama) and Keio Museum Commons (Tokyo). Since 2020, Oyama works in 2 studios in New York and Tokyo back and forth.

https://www.enricoisamuoyama.net/