Force of Nature : Site Installations by Ten Japanese Artists

This catalog documents a grand collaboration between seven institutions in North and South Carolina and ten contemporary Japanese artists. The artists were in the Carolinas for six-week residencies, creating work using natural materials or processes to be installed at their host institutions. The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston and the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College organized these exhibitions and the residency program. Co-curators Mark Sloan and Brad Thomas traveled to Japan in the fall of 2003 with the purpose of identifying artists whose work fit their criteria for Force of Nature, especially artists whose work represented a sustained engagement with the human/nature dialectic. Utilizing a curatorial network of Japanese curators, gallerists, and academics, Sloan and Thomas were able to gain access to some of the most original and provocative artists living in Japan today. The ten selected artists were chosen as much for their philosophical approach to art and nature as for their previous work. Each artist addressed the theme utilizing locally available natural materials (salt, wood, dirt, plant-life, etc.) or natural elements and processes (wind, fire, water, decay, evaporation, erosion, etc.) in a temporary installation. These installations explored the relationship between humans and nature through the minds and hands of these contemporary artists. This exhibition provoked a dialog and discussion with members of each host community while bringing the work of these young artists to the attention of audiences who would have few opportunities to view contemporary Japanese art. The residencies and installations occurred in the fall of 2006, with a capstone exhibition at the Sumter County Gallery of Art in April 2007, and a follow-up symposium and exhibition at Kyoto University of Art and Design.

About the Authors: Mark Sloan has been the director and senior curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston since 1994. He has authored (or co-authored) six books of literary nonfiction, among them Self-Made Words: Visionary Folk Art Environments (Aperture, 1997), and Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus 1901-1927 as Seen by F.W Glasier, Photographer (Quantuck Lane Press/W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), and Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HarperResource, 2003). Brad Thomas is director of the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College. He has organized numerous exhibitions, including the retrospective of apocalyptic visionary paintings by the late Reverend McKendree Robbins Long and a presentation of narrative textiles by indigenous peoples of war-torn countries, entitled Threads of Conflict. His critical reviews have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, and most recently, he has authored catalogues for survey exhibitions of works on paper by Robert Lazzarini and large earth-based sculptures by Thomas Sayre. Noriko Fuku Associate curator Noriko Fuku is a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design. As an independent curator, she has organized major exhibitions by artists David Byrne, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Man Ray, and Cindy Sherman. She has also organized many exhibitions of Japanese artists, including Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan (co-curated with Christopher Phillips) for the International Center of Photography in New York.