exhibition of Fumie Sasabuchi, Galerie Zink Berlin, 31st October - 20th December 2008

Fumie Sasabuchi unlocks the repressed visual world and reveals a new concept of beauty. (Bernhart Schwenk, Curator at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich)

Galerie Zink Berlin will exhibit works by Fumie Sasabuchi (*1975, Tokyo),from 31st October to 20th December. Fumie Sasabuchi originally studied at the Tama Art University, Tokyo until 2002 and later at the Munich Art Academy under Norbert Prangenberg. In 2007 Fumie Sasabuchi was the first to part-take in Galerie Zink's Artist in Residence Programme, where an artist from the gallery resides in Harlem, New York for three months. In her most recent solo-show Fumie Sasabuchi deconstructs the perception of a perfect physique and plays very deliberately with the subject of death.

Death and our own mortality are taboo topics in our culture. As a result, we issue ourselves with euphemisms to reshape a parallel world. The transience of life combined with different symbols of vanity are demonstrated in contemporary art. Death is personified as skeletons, skulls and various other adjuncts of ephemeral imagery. Exponents express commerce today more than previous canons of beauty and over-reaching themes such as body modification and obsessions with beauty in unacceptable dimensions.

The works of Fumie Sasabuchi are neither pure provocations, purposive fractures with common agendas nor moral references. Many object to her work. Superficiality is an amendment through expansion. Fumie Sasabuchi makes the taboo visible and forces us to confront our own mortality.
As with a scalpel, Fumie Sasabuchi uses a ball-point pen to freely explore an underlying surface, therefore creating hybrid body images in which promotional aesthetic is fused with material naturalistic anatomical study. Fumie Sasabuchi comments on how our skin naturally protects our body.

The clay skulls which appear in the exhibition resemble, by rote, forms of once living objects. The observer should perceive it as mirror image which up to today, emblematizes the most intense momentariness of our existence. The paintings and drawings which feature the grim reaper with or without a scythe, refer to eccentric poses interpreted from the 'death dances' of the 14th and 15th Centuries, minus the moral teaching imagery.

The manipulation of the modern visual world represents, in the 21st Century, an accepted magnitude.
However, there are still very clear boundaries with regards to what is allowed to be shown. The subject of death remains as one of many taboos in Western culture. Fumie Sasabuchi unlocks the repressed visual world and reveals a new concept of beauty.

gallery:
2000 opening of the gallery in Munich, Theresienstraße 122a
2006 office in Manhattan, New York
2007 opening of the gallery in Berlin, Schlesische Str. 27
2007 residency studio in Harlem, New York

gallerist: Michael Zink

artists/represented since:
Benjamin Bergmann, 2008
Benjamin Butler, 2006
Marcel van Eeden, 2001
Gregory Forstner, 2006
Sabrina Fritsch, 2005
Felix Stephan Huber, 2000
Dieter Kiessling, 2001
Rosilene Luduvico, 2002
Euan Macdonald, 1996
Eva Marisaldi, 2003
Per Mårtensson, 2007
Yuri Masnyj, 2008
Yoshitomo Nara, 1994
Yoshitomo Nara+Graf, 2007
John Pilson, 2004
Heather Rowe, 2005
Fumie Sasabuchi, 2003
Glenn Sorensen, 2006
Thomas Steffl, 2003
German Stegmaier, 1995
Ante Timmermans, 2007
Rinus van de Velde, 2008
Stefan Wissel, 2001

art fairs 2007/2008:
Art Forum Berlin
Art Basel Miami Beach
ARCO Madrid
Volta New York
Next Art Fair Chicago

Galerie Zink was established at Munich in 2000 as one of the first art spaces in the emerging Munich Kunstareal located around the Pinakothek der Moderne. To give the gallery and its artists a better accessibility to the international art world Michael Zink opened a space in Berlin Kreuzberg at Schlesische Str. 27 in January 2007 with the show „Berlin Baracke“ by Nara & graf. Besides that, in February 2007 the gallery started its studio program in New York. Currently, Per Mårtensson lives and works at the residency studio.

With a straight international intention, the gallery´s focus is to support promising young artists. That way Marcel van Eeden and Rosilene Luduvico were introduced to the public and succeded in giving well received entreés. The gallery‘s program is also shaped by long lasting and deep collaborations with artists the gallery started with in the early 1990ies like Yoshitomo Nara and Euan Macdonald, whose works we have shown since the formation
of the gallery in 1994.

The gallery´s program is tied up through a strong obligation to communicate art through clear and intense visual ideas. Hereby, the gallery´s program is not limited to certain media, but displays the whole bandwidth from drawing, painting and sculpture to photography and interactive video installation.

The gallery promotes and shows its artists in up to six gallery exhibitions in Munich and five in Berlin each year. In order to show and place the work of the artists represented in public collections, the gallery cooperates with museums and art institutions at an international scale. That way it was possible for Marcel van Eeden to present a his drawings f.ex. at Kunstverein Hannover (2006), Kunsthalle Tübingen (2007), CAB Burgos (2008) and for Yoshitomo Nara & graf to have shows at the GEM/Den Haag (2007), the CAC/Málaga (2007) and The Baltic/Newcastle (2008). Besides that, the gallery accompanies its artists‘ exhibitions through catalogues published by it or through its initiative. Since 2006 ten catalogues were released, initiated and accompanied by the gallery:

• Stefan Wissel, last night a drawing saved my life, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2006
• Michael Sailstorfer, Für immer war gestern, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2006
• Euan Macdonald, everythinghappensatonce, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2006
• Marcel van Eeden, K.M. Wiegand. Life and Work, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2006
• Marcel van Eeden,Celia, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2006
• John Pilson, Interregna, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2006
• Fumie Sasabuchi, Drawings, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2006
• Rosilene Luduvico, See it coming/Virá que eu vi, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2007
• Yoshitomo Nara

Galerie Zink Berlin
Schlesische Str. 27
(gsg-courtyard, house 2/3, 2nd floor)
D-10997 Berlin

t +49 (0) 30 / 69 81 43 20
f +49 (0) 30 / 69 81 43 40
berlin(at)galeriezink.de
www.galeriezink.de

press contact:
Chalwa Communication
Chalwa Heigl
Kohlstraße 2
D-80469 München
t +49 (0) 89 / 20 20 79 38
f +49 (0) 89 / 20 20 91 36
chalwa(at)chalwa.com

This release was published on openPR.