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今回、涌井智仁の映像の作品を、Chim↑Pomの協力のもと展示します。高円寺の洞窟のような場所で体験した過去に見たような、でも未来に起きるかもしれないざらざらとした感覚。画面に繰り広げられるイメージは限りなく思考を刺激します。若手アーティストの真摯な表現への新たな試みを是非、お楽しみください。（小山登美夫）
人類は様々な否定の上に歴史を編み上げてきました。生物の自然淘汰と絶滅、時代に合わず失われたテクノロジー。歴史は常に暫定的で偶然的な否定によって成立させられています。しかし、アートは新しい世界を生み出す技術で、アーティストとはそれを啓く者のことを指します。この歴史に留まり、安心することは許されません。
今回の個展で私が試みたいのは、これまでの否定を否定し、あり得た／あり得るべき世界に関してペンを走らせることです。それは今までの人類を絶滅させ、新しい人類を懐胎するための最初の一歩になるはずです。
私は想像します。決して想像ができないものを。（涌井智仁）
今年５月、Chim↑PomのギャラリーGarter（通称キタコレビル）にて開催された涌井智仁の個展「Long,Long,Long」。真っ暗な空間に光ケーブルやモニタ、LEDが点滅し、腐葉土の腐臭が鼻をつく。サン・ラのインタビューやノイズ音、猿が話すハナモゲラ語が飛び交う中、それぞれの作品から光の線が天井へと伸びて、穴をつたって屋根の上へと続いていた。戦前のバラックを改造したまるで九龍城のような建物の屋上にはアンテナが立ち、会場から集められたデータが北極星へと発信されていた。「人類がいなくなった後の表現」と題されたトークには多くの若者を集めつつも、謎めいた話に「理解出来ない」との声を多く聞いた。無理もない。ビジュアルの目新しさやデジタルのスキル、ニューテクノロジー、SNSなど時事的なスペックばかりを謳歌する昨今のポストインターネット・デジタルアートへの呪術的・普遍的な批評として、涌井はひとり「データとは何か」というハードコアと向き合い、電波となって宇宙を飛び交うデータに想いを馳せて、距離的時間的無限を旅していたのだから。きっと「2001年宇宙の旅」が封切られた1968年の真っ暗な映画館にも、あんな静謐な空気が漂っていたに違いないと思う。８月。小山登美夫さんからの驚きの提案ー彼の個展をヒカリエでーによって、涌井智仁の第二弾。高円寺キタコレから考えたら、ドブ川からホテルのプールくらいの大展開。「Long,Long,Long」で初めて高円寺を訪れたという小山さんと涌井の未知との遭遇は、きっと近年乖離してきた印象の強い若手の問題意識と日本のギャラリーシーンに新たな関係を迫るはず。更に秋には上妻世海との共同キュレーション展が行われるという。モノからデータへとシフトするパラダイムのまさに初期、2016年の涌井の動きが僕らの未来を刺激する。（卯城竜太 Chim↑Pom）
涌井智仁は1990年、新潟生まれ。現在は東京を拠点に制作活動を行っています。映像、ジャンクパーツやオーディオなどをプログラミングによって結合させ、テクノロジーの原始的な可能性を表現する作品を制作しています。データを根源的に捉え直し、人類とその歴史における次の展開を美術によって模索しています。
主な個展に「蒼い優しさに抱かれて」（ナオナカムラ、東京、2012年）、「Long,Long,Long」（Garter、東京、2016年）、主なグループ展に「限界とかねーし Limiter cutしてるし展」（HIGURE 17-15 cas、東京、2013年）、「天才ハイスクール」（山本現代、東京、2013年）、「旅公演（どりふと）」（東京都美術館、2015年）、「Genbutsu Over Dose」（キタコレビル、東京、2015年）などがあります。
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In this exhibition we present the film work of Tomohito Wakui, in collaboration with Chim↑Pom. Wakui’s work has the sensation of something seen in the past, yet also the dazzling brilliance of something which might take place in the future that I have experienced in a place like a cavern in Koenji. The images unfurling on the screen inspire us to think without any limitations. We invite you to enjoy the sincere visual expressions of this young artist, constantly surmounting new challenges. (Tomio Koyama)
Humanity has woven its history upon the basis of many negations. The processes of natural selection and extinction among living things; or technology that has been lost, or has become redundant for its era. History has always been created according to provisional and accidental negations. However, art is a technology through which a new world is brought into being, and an artist is someone capable of enlightening us of this. If we were to go no further than the above representation of history, true contentment would forever be barred from us.
What I am attempting in this exhibition is to negate all of these negations which have gone before, and to set my pen in motion in relation to a world which was possible, or which should be possible. This will entail causing the destruction of humanity as it has existed up until now, and will in turn become the first step in order to conceive of a new humanity.
I imagine this. Even though it is absolutely unimaginable. (Tomohito Wakui)
In May this year, Tomohito Wakui held the solo exhibition ‘Long,Long,Long’ at Chim↑Pom’s Gallery Garter (also known as the Kitakore Building). In a pitch-dark space there were optical fibres and monitors, flickering LED lights, and a stinkingly putrid smell of leaf mulch. The interviews and noise sounds of Sun Ra flew through the air intermingled with the hanamogera language of talking monkeys. In the midst of this, a line of light extended up from each artwork and continued to the top of the ceiling. It was like a reconstructed pre-war barracks, antennae jutting out from its roofs just like the buildings of Kowloon Walled City: as though the data collected from the venue was going to be transmitted towards the North Star. Although many young people gathered for the related talk “Visual Expression After Humanity’s Demise”, amidst the enigmatic discussion many voices that could be heard saying, ‘I don’t understand.’ Yet it was not impossible to understand. Wakui is unique in the visual originality and the digital skill of his work. He offers a universal and magical critique of the nature of recent post-internet digital art, which has tended almost always to exult in new technologies, social media, and current affairs-related ideas. Wakui alone questions the hard core of ‘What really is ‘data’?’, accelerating his thoughts toward the notion of data which at this very moment encircles the planet as electromagnetic waves, as it travels with no temporal or spatial limitations. This seems no different at all to what it must have been like in the tranquilly drifting darkness of the cinema in which '2001: A Space Odyssey' was first released in 1968. This August we witness an enhanced version of Tomohito Wakui, thanks to Tomio Koyama’s surprise proposal to hold his solo exhibition at Hikarie. Thinking back to the Kitakore show in Koenji, this great advancement is the equivalent of going from the rivers of the gutter to a hotel swimming pool. The encounter at ‘Long,Long,Long’ between the still unknown Wakui and Tomio Koyama, visiting Kōenji for the first time, will surely lead us closer to a new relationship between the Japanese gallery scene and the critical minds of young people for whom in recent years this scene has had a strongly alienating impression. Wakui further plans to hold a collaborative curation exhibition this autumn with Sekai Kouzuma. In what is surely the beginning of a paradigm shift from the world of objects to that of data, Wakui’s activities in 2016 are certain to be an impetus for our own futures. (Ryūta Ushiro, Chim↑Pom)
Tomohito Wakui was born in 1990 in Niigata. He currently continues to live and work based in Tokyo. His practice includes film pieces as well as work made by combining common junk parts with audio and other components and programming them, in order to produce art that expresses technology’s primitive possibilities. He re-perceives the notion of data in its most fundamental sense, and in doing so, searches – through art - for the next evolution within humanity’s history.
Significant recent exhibitions include ‘Aoi Yasashisa Ni Dakarete’ (Naonakamura, Tokyo, 2012) and ‘Long,Long,Long’ (Garter, Tokyo, 2016). Selected group exhibitions include ‘Genkai Toka Ne-Shi Limiter cut Shiteru Shi Ten’ (Higure 17-15 cas, Tokyo, 2013), ‘Tensai High School!!!!’ (Yamamoto Gendai, Tokyo, 2013), ‘Tabikoen (Dorifuto)’ (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 2015) and ‘Genbutsu Over Dose’ (Kitakore Building, Tokyo, 2015).
