Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik [solo]

Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo

Nov. 2–Dec. 3, 2022

URL: http://www.ykggallery.com/

Yutaka Kikutake Gallery is pleased to present Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik, Yuko Mohri’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, which will take place from November 2 to December 3. The exhibition’s title is German for “new dance music that smells like fruit.” This show focuses on Mohri’s recent series Decomposition, in which she inserts electrodes into fruit to measure their internal moisture levels and converts changes in resistance, caused by withering or rotting, into sound. Here she exhibits Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik (photo), a group of photographs that capture the process of fruit’s biodegradation, and Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik (vinyl), an audio recording in LP form that documents the sounds captured in the Decomposition series.

Thus far, Mohri has presented installations that combine ready-made items, found objects, and devices she constructs to generate phenomena that change depending on the exhibition environment and other conditions. Energy generated by electronic circuits is diffused and reflected through the compositions of the works, conveying to the viewer, through sight, sound, and sometimes touch and smell, fragments of unpredictable phenomena that occur in daily life and the latent complexities of the overarching structure of the world.

Decomposition, on view in this exhibition, continues this practice by translating minuscule changes occurring inside fruit into sound, conveying the life of fruit that continues to emerge and evolve even after its connection to the soil and tree trunk has been severed. As one of the most popular and frequently depicted motifs in Western art, ephemeral fruit has been given eternal life in paintings. Another noteworthy point is that the artist took Buddhist kusozu (lit. “nine-stage paintings”), which depict corpses in the gradual process of decay and disfigurement, as a point of reference when creating this work. While based on the format of live electronics, practiced since the 1960s by predecessors such as John Cage and David Tudor that Mohri deeply respects and admires, Decomposition also uses dying organic matter as a medium of expression, and as such could perhaps be described as a “living dead electronic installation.”

The work’s title is a word consisting of “composition” and the prefix “de-,” which connotes “negation of” or “departure from.” Decomposition can be seen as a natural, spontaneous compositional method, which while conveying the inherent complexity and fluidity of various things and phenomena in the world, also functions as a device to derive aesthetic elements from them. We invite you to view the latest work by Yuko Mohri, an artist who has taken a consistent interest in the “unstable,” and who continues to employ displacement and dissonance as she reveals various aspects of the constantly changing energy around us.

Installation vew from PHD Group, Hong Kong

Neue Fruchtige Tanzmusik [solo]