| The Group 1965 | Dusseldorf, Germany |
Parco KINOSHITA as "Haruko" Installation in Nagaya
The idea for this project was proposed by Dr. Gregor Jansen, the director of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. His concept is to introduce strong but relatively unknown Japanese contemporary artists in Germany.
The Group 1965 (Showa 40 nenkai) is an artist-collective in Japan. The members usually work individually, and all have established solo careers. Some are internationally acclaimed artists. They do not have any specific aims, common artistic beliefs or ambitions as a group, as they never originally intended to exhibit their work together. They only decided to form a group after discovering they were all born in 1965. They are: Makoto Aida, Sumihisa Arima, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Oscar Oiwa, Parco Kinoshita, and Hiroyuki Matsukage.
There were many visitors during the exhibition, not only Japanese people living in Dusseldorf but also local audience. Japanese contemporary art besides Murakami, Nara is quite intriguing there, so that many media came to the preview and press conference. The exhibition is reviewed by so many local media, also internationally including Art Forun and Art it.
All the six artists showed their individual works, and also created collaborative installation entitled "Nagaya" was superb in terms of its variety and physically interruption to the audience.
Finally the exhibition was full-scaled and shown artists' mid-career achievement in the connection of Joseph Beuys who lived and worked in Dusseldorf and left the "hall" piece in the Kunsthalle
In 1994, at the NICAF (Nihon International Contemporary Art Festival), Makoto Aida, Hiroyuki Matsukage, Oscar Oiwa and Tsuyoshi Ozawa were chatting and suddenly realized that they were all born in 1965. This gave rise to the idea of forming a group. The members usually work individually, and are all established to a certain degree. Some are internationally acclaimed artists. They organized the project 40x40, a series of monthly events/exhibitions/parties in the year of 2005, when each of the artists hit the age of 40.
