Installation „Invisible/Visible - relation and process“

‘Kunst am Bau (Percent for art)’ is the idea of spending a certain percentage of the construction costs of public buildings on art. In 1950, the German parliament decided to earmark at least 1% of the construction costs for works by visual artists for all federal building contracts. This legal regulation was intended to give new impetus to cultural life, which had been brought to desolation by the National Socialists.

We made use of this idea to connect art and architecture with the artwork “Invisible/Visible - relation and process” by Keiji Uematsu and Nobuko Watanabe. It consists of six sketches, whose reproductions are installed on the south exterior wall of Villa Kamogawa. The originals are located inside the building. The zigzag sewing machine stitches that Watanabe applies to the weathered surface of the exterior wall are reminiscent of hastily applied “patches”.
Uematsu's clearly conceived drawings, which arose from his interest in gravity and attraction, deal with material objects such as meteorites and floating stones as well as circles drawn by stones, whose spiritual and invisible aspects he also evokes.
The six works ironically illustrate the function and effect of the restored façade (wind and rain tightness) and at the same time evoke the playfulness of an artist's house. The installation on the façade and the original drawings will give the Villa Kamogawa a new cultural profile from 22 November.
 
Keiji Uematsu
Born in Kobe, Japan, in 1947, he graduated from the Faculty of Education at Kobe University's Fine Arts Department in 1969. In the same year, he had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 16 (Kyoto) and was awarded the Kobe City Cultural Promotion Prize in 1974. The following year he travelled to West Germany. In 1976, he had his first solo exhibition abroad at the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art (Sweden). In 1988, he was selected to represent Japan at the 43rd Venice Biennale. In 1990, he won the Grand Prize at the 12th Kobe Sumarikyu Park Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition. He received the 38th Nakahara Teijiro Prize in 2013 and was awarded the Hyogo Prefecture Culture Prize most recently in 2022.
In addition to installation works using stone, wood, cloth, iron, glass, etc., his diverse activities include sculpture, photography, video and performance, consistently revealing the structure, existence and relationships of the world through the laws of invisible forces such as gravity, tension and attraction. His works arise from a simple interest in human beings, the earth and the universe. Uematsu has produced a remarkable number of works, that make their audience grasp (the existence of) space by using their own bodies and experiencing the relationship between people and objects.
His most important solo exhibitions include: 1981, PS1 New York; 1997, 2006, Otani Memorial Art Museum, Nishinomiya City. 2003, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art. 2021, ‘Ways of Touching the Invisible-Intuition’, Ashiya City Museum of Art. 2022, ‘An Invitation to a Nonsensical Journey - Dream of Seeing’, Kirishima Art Forest. His group exhibitions include ‘performing for the camera’, Tate Modern, London, 2016, ‘Travelers: stepping into the unknown’, National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2018, ‘Photography and Language’, MoMA, New York, 2024; and many others.
He currently has a studio in Minoh, Osaka, and continues to exhibit internationally in museums, galleries and public spaces in Japan and abroad.
Among the most important public collections are:
the Museum of Modern Art, Kanagawa & Hayama; the National Museum of Art, Osaka; Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art; Otani Memorial Art Museum, Nishinomiya City; Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka; Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art; Moderna Museet in Stockholm; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art; Lenbachhaus Munich, Pinault Collection, and many others.
 
Nobuko Watanabe
Born in 1941 in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. She grew up in western Japan (Kansai region) and graduated from Souai Women's University in 1971 with a degree in piano from the Instrumental Music Department of the Faculty of Music. She has attended painting classes since childhood and still works in the field of art parallel to music. Around 1997, she began to create works with a very simple structure consisting of a frame covered with cotton fabric in a single colour or a striped pattern. The beautifully curved surfaces created by the tension of the fabric, invite the viewer to enter the deep interior of the work through a world of colour.
In 1998, she had her first solo exhibition with Elke Zanda at the Japanese Cultural Institute in Cologne, Germany. The following year, 1999, she exhibited her works in galleries such as Shinanobashi Gallery 5 (Osaka) and Galerie Kiki Maier-Hahn (Düsseldorf). Since then, she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Japan, Germany, France and South Korea and has exhibited her works extensively. In 1997 she won the Excellence Prize at the ABC Art Competition and in 1999 the Grand Prize at the 10th Yoshihara Jiro Prize Art Competition.
Major public collections include:
The Ashiya City Museum of Art, the Nishinomiya City Otani Memorial Art Museum, the Osaka Prefecture, the Japanese Cultural Institute in Cologne, the International Art Centre Aomori, the Asago Art Forest Museum, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, the Shiga Prefectural Museum of Art, the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art.
 

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