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Tag: Ubiquitous: Enrico Isamu Ōyama

2017 Fall exhibitions only have weeks left…

“Deeper” and “broader” are words that come to mind when I think about Fall 2017 exhibitions and programs at the museum. They represent connections with K-State departments and Kansas communities that are deeper and broader than ever before.  From the residency activities of Ubiquitous artist Enrico Isamu Ōyama, to the youth and school programs in conjunction with Sayaka Ganz’s Reclaimed Creations, to the glimpse of our regional past in Thrift Styles, to the  Fronteras/Frontiers  exhibition’s ambitious community outreach – these artistic projects will touch many lives!

I hope you will visit the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art often during this busy fall to encounter the interesting sights created and ideas proposed by these exhibitions and related programs.  The museum aims to serve as a window to the world and to offer an invitation to think anew about this place, the Flint Hills and tall grass prairie of Kansas. We hope you agree that we are fulfilling our mission. Please join us in these adventures! And please note the listings of generous donors who make this work possible. They deserve our hearty and sincere thanks.

Linda Duke, Director

The Beach Museum of Art office and galleries will be closed November 23-25, 2017 and December 24, 2017 through January 1, 2018.

Sayaka Ganz: Reclaimed Creations

September 5 – December 9, 2017

In her sculpture, Sayaka Ganz uses reclaimed plastic objects such as discarded utensils as a painter uses brush strokes. She describes her style as “3D impressionism”: The recycled objects appear unified at a distance, but at close proximity, individual objects are discernable. Sculptures in this exhibition include animals in motion that are rich in color and energy. Ganz was born in Yokohama, Japan, and grew up living in Japan, Brazil, and Hong Kong. She holds a master of fine arts degree in sculpture from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. The Tour of “Sayaka Ganz: Reclaimed Creations” is produced by David J. Wagner, L.L.C., David J. Wagner, Ph.D., Curator/Tour Director.

Ubiquitous: Enrico Isamu Oyama

August 15 – December 23, 2017 

Enrico Isamu Ōyama represents a contemporary generation with a distinctly global perspective. Child of an Italian father and a Japanese mother, Ōyama grew up in Tokyo, Japan, lived for extended periods in North Italy, and has been working in New York since 2011. “Ubiquitous” surveys how Ōyama channeled his interests in Tokyo and American street cultures, Western abstract art, and Japanese calligraphy to create Quick Turn Structure (QTS), his signature expression. Appearing across a wide range of creative platforms, including painting, digital media, sound, and fashion, QTS gives visual form to the mixed-race, multicultural, transnational experiences of people in today’s world of fluid borders and interconnectivity.

Thrift Style

August 1 – December 16, 2017

The reuse of feed, flour, and sugar sacks in clothing and other household objects became popular during the mid-1920s. Businesses capitalized on interest by introducing bags with increasingly varied printed patterns. The sacks and other fabric scraps from manufacturers continued to serve thrifty home sewers during the Great Depression and into the 1960s. A collectors market for the bags and fabric remnants thrives today. This exhibition will explore the recycling of fabrics in clothing and quilts drawn from the collection of the Historic Costume and Textile Museum of Kansas State University. Varied feed bags from a 2016 gift to that museum will highlight the range of print motifs available to twentieth-century home sewers.

Art in Motion, a celebration of art

Mark your calendars!

October 7, 2017 Noon-4:00pm

Beach Museum of Art Parking Lot and Galleries

Live painting performance by artist Enrico Isamu Ōyama at 2:00 p.m. In Ōyama’s live painting performance he responds in the moment to surrounding people, sounds, atmosphere, and energy. Duration: 30 minutes.

Make your own print in GraficoMovil, a mobile printmaking studio/gallery. Created by artist Artemio Rodríguez.

Action art activities for all ages, EVERYONE’S WELCOME!

Art in Motion, a celebration of art in the museum parking lot.

Concurrent with “Harmony at the ‘Hatt” music festival in Triangle Park, Aggieville district.

Sunny 102.5 will broadcast live from the event

Enrico Isamu Oyama: Guest Blogger

I first met Aileen when she visited my project Aeromural at the Clocktower Gallery in 2013 with our friend and his baby.

The curator Aileen June Wang and I first met in New York in 2013 when she came to see my project Aeromural at Clocktower Gallery in New York City’s TriBeCa district. Since then, we have become really good friends. We had many  conversations about doing a project together. The first idea she raised was a two-person show with Japanese American visual artist Alex Kukai Shinohara. I was excited. She tried to find a venue for the show but it was not easy.

Then, Aileen was invited by a gallerist to propose a mural for a car wash with a large wall at the corner of West 24th Street and 10th Avenue in Chelsea, New York City’s gallery district. She and I worked on a proposal with a mock-up of the mural for the owner, but this didn’t happen neither.

The car wash building in the gallery district of New York City, for which we proposed a mural in 2014.

Aileen was invited by the NARS Foundation in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to curate a group show that would have included my works, but soon after, she was offered the job as associate curator at the Beach Museum of Art. I remember the moment when she told me about her new job. We were having lunch together near the Museum of Modern Art. I was excited for her new journey.

Aileen’s farewell party in 2015 at the Brooklyn Museum’s Art Off the Wall event, arranged by Sharon Matt Atkins, Director of Curatorial Affairs (fifth from the left). Other participants from left to right: New York artist Babs Reingold; New York artist Margaret Murphy; Curator Midori Yoshimoto, who introduced Aileen to me; my wife Shihori and I.

From August to October of 2015, I did a residency program at Chelsea College of Arts in London. Right after I returned to New York in November, I got an email from Aileen when I was in Strand Book Store near Union Square to find some nice second-hand books on New York Writing Culture. I noticed right away that this message is about something special. Aileen was talking about a possibility of my solo show at the Beach Museum of Art. Somehow, I had a good feeling that this time it was going to happen. After a while, she confirmed that the show was officially on the museum’s calendar.

Our productive conversation and a few trials of doing a project together over the past few years resulted in something really exciting. I deeply thank Aileen for giving such an amazing opportunity to a young artist like me and everyone at the Beach Museum for their effort and labor to make this exhibition happen.

The sound installation piece Aeromural, which was the opportunity for me to meet Aileen four years ago, will be on display at the Mark A. Chapman Gallery, Willard Hall, Kansas State University as a part of my exhibition “Ubiquitous: Enrico Isamu Ōyama.” I hope everyone who visits the show can enjoy it more from knowing this little back story.

Oyama’s exhibition Ubiquitous: Enrico Isamu Oyama is on display in the Hyle Family Gallery at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art from August 15 – December 23, 2017.