Contemporary Art Gallery

Criterium 101Takuya Watanabe

Criterium 101 introduces Takuya Watanabe who expresses his views on mobility and labor through involvement with people he meets where he stays or his examination of social situations in specific areas.
Watanabe has participated in artist-in-residence programs in various places in and outside Japan, and by researching the subject closely over a period of time, for example, living in a depopulated marginal settlement, he finds a universal theme. The subjects he photographs or films are sometimes people who cooperate with him at places he visits, and he captures how he relives them in some ways using his body. In recent years, he stayed in Singapore, London and Ohara in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. He continues to conduct research on how plants exert an influence on people’s lives, behavior, or economy. Plants that neither speak nor move are normally perceived as objects that are used at people’s convenience. As he reconsiders plants as “subjects of conduct” in the environment including the human society, he looks closely at intricately interwoven relationships between plants and humans.
*Criterium comes from the Latin "criterion," which means a standard. It primarily features new works by a young artist. Every exhibition is formed jointly by an artist and a curator of Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito.