Troedsson Villa is pleased to announce a group exhibition at The Pawnbroker's Museum in Nikko, Japan. Organized by Anne Eastman and Tam Ochiai, the exhibition is titled Zureta, a word that refers to something being slightly off, displaced, out of sync, or shifted just enough to catch our attention. Whether by design or accident, when an idea, person, place, moment, or material is dislocated, the resulting imperfection opens up countless possibilities. The artists in this exhibition respond to these shifting realities. Each work points toward a fugitive memory of a place or a sense of self dislodged from its point of origin.
Takeshi Miyakawa photographed himself as a ghost among the wreckage of a waterfront building along the East River in the early 1990s. Newly arrived from Tokyo to New York, he appears as a hazy, anonymous figure.
Stephen Sprott's silkscreen prints emerge from an elegant economy of means. A single layer is collaged or extracted from gathered images, then isolated and reiterated until familiarity forms a kind of faith in the unknowable.
Yoshiro Furuhashi (b. 1932–d. 2008) who lived his entire life in Nikko, offers an exploration of a familiar landscape transformed by shifting light and seasons.
Robert Beck changed his last name to Buck as an artistic intervention into his own identity, a subtle shift of one letter with cascading implications. The exhibition includes early photographs from his time in New York, taken with a Kodak Colorburst 250 instant camera. If a secondary theme runs through the show, it might be the way shifts in place inspire artists. Works grasp to capture impressions of something soon to disappear or already gone.
Cici Wu's video work Tsaiyun (Rosy-Cloud) Bridge (2023) was originally shown in a light installation in the form of an upside-down, suspended bridge, presented here away from its original context. The piece takes inspiration from a name change in the socialist-era Chinese publication China Pictorial, and reflects on slippages in language, ideology, and personal narrative.
Ayano Shibata's fluid and free oil paintings evoke a snarling of cosmic and earthly undergrowth.
Hiroyuki Oki continues to question architecture through video and drawing. His work is a fusion of artistic production and daily life, and it is also a practice concerning finitude and infinity.
Tam Ochiai's ongoing body of work, often referred to as "Drawing as an Idea," can be seen as an attempt to crystallize movement and displacement. The exhibition includes work from his series Everyone Has Two Places, which traces sites of birth and death as portraits, along with other work.
Anne Eastman's moon drawings, photographs, and video work function as a drawing practice and record of time and place. These echo in a snarled found object made of rebar and concrete, a remnant of a collapsed retaining wall discovered in the mountains of Nikko and re-presented here as a naturally formed sculpture.
Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito, who stayed in Nikko this spring, present studies of the landscape. Their drawings feel like attention coming into focus and the sensation of seeing before comprehending.
Chinatsu Yasuhara presents a slideshow of photographs of her grandmother's house, a site of personal significance which was recently torn down. She revisits it as a space for art and exhibition making.
Monique Mouton lived and worked in Nikko last fall in Nikko. Fragments of scenes are painted from memory on jacquard fabric. A small painting on paper, its wash of blue suggesting water or sky, captures an elusive impression of a place.
Like the show's title, these works are not rigidly fixed. They might move in the breeze, shift out of sync, snag our attention and attach themselves to our subconscious.
Troedsson Villa is an art project organized by Anne Eastman in the town of Nikko. In addition to its residency program, it hosts workshops and exhibitions in various locations around town.
This exhibition is held at The Pawnbroker's Museum, a former antiques warehouse located just past the parking lot behind Meguri Café on Nikko's main street. The venue takes its name directly from a flyer printed 100 years ago.
