Dutch and Japanese Artists Explore The Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Landscapes for Mimicry of Hollows, a Group Exhibition at Tokyo’s New Independent Art Space The 5th Floor

A group exhibition of Japanese and Dutch artists, sponsored by The Embassy of the Netherlands in Japan, is opening in Tokyo’s new independent curatorial space The 5th Floor.

Curated by Vincent Ruijters and Seiha Kurosawa, artist selection includes Anne de Vries (NL), Tanja Engelberts (NL), Floris Schönfeld (NL), Vincent Ruijters (NL) & Ray LC (US) , Nile Koetting (JP), and Masahide Matsuda (JP).

The exhibition theme falls under the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the natural environment and will premiere specially commissioned works dealing with human relationships with new digital and physical realities.

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Tokyo’s new independent art space The 5th Floor is pleased to announce the opening of Mimicry of Hollows, an exhibition co-curated by Dutch artist Vincent Ruijters and Japanese curator Seiha Kurosawa.

Supported by The Embassy of the Netherlands in Japan as well as Tokyo University of the Arts, Mimicry of Hollows takes from the concept of hollows hidden in the black boxes of the knowledge economy. “In recent years, with the rapid development of algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI), our society has been radically altered by the algorithms of social networking platforms, market systems, and unconsciously manipulated to maximize profits,” explains Seiha Kurosawa, co-curator of the exhibition, who is also a PhD candidate at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Global Arts and co-curator of the upcoming Thailand Biennale 2021. Opening during a pandemic during Tokyo’s presupposed 2021 Olympics, Mimicry of Hollows aims to seek out the invisible AI-entities which hold significant influence in the age of digital acceleration.

“Needless to say, the coronavirus pandemic that occurred with the beginning of 2020 has made us critically aware of what is going on behind the scenes of our recognizable world. This exhibition aims to shine light on the invisible hollows of our earth and societies, ones that are becoming increasingly apparent in this day and age. As human beings, we tend to mimic and anthropomorphize that what we cannot see or comprehend with the naked eye” notes Vincent Ruijters, Dutch artist based in Tokyo and co-curator of the exhibition. The exhibition will showcase artists’ current responses to AI technology, from both Euro-American and East Asian perspectives. Participating artists come from the Netherlands, Japan, and the U.S., and the exhibition will highlight their responses to the current global pandemic.

The exhibition will present works from artists who deal with the anthropomorphization of AI technology and its consequences on society and the natural terrain. Selected artists include Anne de Vries, an acclaimed figure of early post-internet art, Tanja Engelberts, known for her projects dealing with artificial landscapes in her native Holland, Floris Schönfeld, Dutch artist questioning the relationship between artificial and human intelligence, Vincent Ruijters, Dutch artist based in Tokyo & Ray LC, Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media, who together have created Chikyuchi, a specially-commissioned game incorporating machine-learning and codes of consumer cultures to raise awareness to ecological crises, Nile Koetting, Japanese artist known for his immersive experiences blurring the lines between performance, installation, and video art, and Masahide Matsuda, Japanese conceptual artist commenting on the consumerist tendencies of digital culture with themes such as privacy paradox and narrative therapy.

Mimicry of Hollows takes from the concept of the “Hollow”, referring to the relationship between Figure and Ground and the increasingly blurry boundary between the Digital and Physical. Works presented in this exhibition will contemplate the potentialities of capturing this world of unclear boundaries by mimicking the realm of unrecognizable hollows. “In this day and age, with various "Hollows areas" moving into the foreground on a global scale, instead of separating ourselves from them, we should try to figure out how to face them and what we can discover about them,” explains Kurosawa. These hollows encompass major forces that are shaping the contemporary world such as A.I. and ever-changing natural landscapes.

Keywords:
Nature, Landscape, Artificial Intelligence, Anthropomorphism, Co-Existence

Exhibition Period:
June 11 – June 27, 2021

Supported by:
Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Japan
Tokyo University of the Arts

For more information about Mimicry of Hollows and The 5th Floor, please contact Sophie Arni: [email protected]