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The Group 1965

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Formation1994
TypeContemporary artist group (painting, installation, performance)
HeadquartersTokyo
Location
  • Tokyo and New York
Membership
6 artists + 1 manager
Official language
Japanese, English
Websitewww.40nen.jp/index_e.html
File:The Group 1965.jpg
The Group 1965 artists: Oscar Oiwa, Aida Makoto, Matsukage Hiroyuki, Ozawa Tsuyoshi, Kinoshita Parco, Arima Sumihisa. Düsseldorf, May 5th, 2011

The Group 1965 (in Japanese: 昭和40年会 or Showa 40 Nenkai) is a Japanese contemporary art group formed by Makoto Aida, Sumihisa Arima, Parco Kinoshita, Hiroyuki Matsukage, Oscar Oiwa, and Tsuyoshi Ozawa

Founding

In 1994, at the NICAF venue (Nihon International Contemporary Art Festival), Aida, Matsukage, Oiwa and Ozawa, suddenly realizing that they were all born in 1965 decided to form a group, and organized a “Press Conference Performance” at NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), announcing the start up of The Group 1965 . There have been some withdrawals and new enrollments, but from 1999 until now the group members have remained stable. The Group 1965 is not an artist collective in the conventional sense. It formed more or less by chance, and its members share little other than their Japanese nationality and having been born in 1965. Artists participating in this collective individually produce their works in a wide range of arts, photos, music and performance. Though respective artists express in different ways, they share something in common such as generational background, nonsense, humor and performance.[1]

The artists in THE GROUP 1965 have such different styles that this stylistic diversity itself is the group’s one defining characteristic. Their different modes of expression encompass installation, painting, contemporary music, performance, new media, and community-based art. In Japanese THE GROUP 1965 is known as the “Showa 40 Nenkai.” “Showa 40 nen” refers to the 40th year of the Showa Emperor’s reign, or 1965 by the western calendar. This does not imply any specific ideology concerning the Japanese imperial line; “Showa” simply marks out a specific time period in Japan.[1]

While at first the group’s formation appears trivial, the act of attaching artistic importance to such personal details can be traced back to earlier artistic movements like Fluxus. In this sense THE GROUP 1965 can be thought of as continuing the legacy of the Fluxus-inspired Japanese avant-garde groups of the 1960s. Their use of humour and lack of clear principles and objectives further echoes these earlier groups.[1]

In the Japanese avant-garde art movements that sprang up after the war, those that emerged in the 1950s had a family-like structure with young artists gathered around a single leader-like figure. In the case of “Jikken Kobo” (“Experimental Workshop”), which formed in 1951, Toru Takemitsu, Joji Yuasa, Katsuhiro Yamaguichi, and Kuniharu Akitama, all in their early twenties, gathered around the poet Shuzo Takiguchi, who was 48 years old at the time. And Jiro Yoshihara was 49 when in 1954 he launched “Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai” (“Gutai Art Association”), while those who gathered around him, including Shozo Shimamoto, Atsuko Tanalka, and Kazuo Shiraga were all around 30. When THE GROUP 1965 was formed in 1994. all of the members had turned 29. However, unlike Jikken Kobo and Gutai, there is no leader-like figure, there is no centrality among the members, and of course there is no manifesto. The only reason behind the formation of the group was that the members were born in the same year.[2]

Selected exhibitions

A partial list of exhibitions since 1994:[3]

  • 1994-Press conference performance, NHK Studio, Tokyo
  • 1994-Nasubi Gallery: Showa 40 Nenkai (The Group 1965), Roppongi Wave, Tokyo
  • 1996-The Group 1965(Performance, lecture, workshop Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Ehime
  • 1997-98The Group 1965 - The Voices from Tokyo, Galeria Metropolitana de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain / Galerie Espace Flon, Lausanne, Switzerland / ACC Galerie Weimar, Weimar, Germany
  • 1999- The Group 1965 - The Voices from Tokyo, Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo
  • 1999-Shine or Rain, Nadiff, Tokyo
  • 2000-The Group 1965 in Osaka, Gallery Kodama, Osaka
  • 2005-40 x40 Project: 40 (Sa Sip) exhibitionAlternative Space Loop, Club Latino, Seoul
  • 2005-BankART Life, BankART Studio NYK, Yokohama
  • 2005-40 x 40 project: The Group 1965 Seven Samurais, Even, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima
  • 2008-The Group 1965’s Tokyo Guide, Nadiff apart, Tokyo
  • 2011-We are boys! Künsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 2011-The Group 1965 Arsenalle Kiev, Ukraine

References

  1. ^ a b c Hasegawa, Hitomi, Shining Under the Spotlightfrom book The Group 1965 We are boys!, Silvana Editoriale Spa, Milano, 2011 .
  2. ^ KATAOKA Mami, THE GROUP 1965 —Long-lasting. Decentralist. Lax from book The Group 1965 We are boys!, Silvana Editoriale Spa, Milano, 2011 .
  3. ^ The Group 1965 We are boys! pages 124-126, Silvana Editoriale Spa, Milano, 2011 .
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