KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to announce the opening of Namazu’s solo exhibition, Real-life Escape Room, from Friday, September 25th, 2020.

鯰 [Namazu] is an art team consisting of three members, Yoshiki Omote, Shoma Fujimura, and Taichi Moriyama. The three individuals, who are also active as artists, have their bases in Toride City, Ibaraki Prefecture, and while focusing on daily drinking parties, they sublimate their everyday life into performances and works that incorporate interactive elements. The city of Toride in Ibaraki Prefecture is in the “suburbs,” and the areas where each member was born and raised were also in the “suburbs.” While many artists exhibit in the metropolitan area, many of them have their production bases in the suburbs, and the activities of 鯰 [Namazu] show the reality of these many artists. The team deliberately collides with each members’ unique perspectives and areas of specialty to enable the dynamism of the suburbs to be expressed in their work, which could not be established in the metropolitan area. 

For example, in the performance “Loading” showcased by 鯰 [Namazu] in Tennozu, Tokyo, in November 2018, the members brought materials, waste, or even the work itself from their studios, and continuously stuck them up on a truck as a performance. 

While many other art collectives define the roles of each member, 鯰 [Namazu] does not build such a social structure within them. They try to re-question the relationship between “seeing” and “being seen” between the artist and the viewer by intentionally incorporating the miscommunication and conflict that occur among them. For example, in the performance "Loading," all kinds of materials and substances were piled up on a truck one after another for several days without any fixed rules, which occasionally caused quarrels among the members, and the accumulation of the different experiences and unique grooves resulted in leaving the viewers behind from time to time.