Simon Fujiwara
Simon Fujiwara (born September 10, 1982 in Harrow, United Kingdom) is a British/Japanese artist.
His works range from paintings and photographs to installations, film and sculptures. They are shown all around the world, for example in the Tate Modern in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin und the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery.
In 2016 Simon Fujiwara showed shaved furs of animals in Tokyo, a multimedial biography of the Irish "traitor" Roger Casement in Dublin[1] und the skin pigments of the German chancellor Angela Merkel, magnified by the factor of 1,000, in Berlin.[2] In Bregenz (Austria) he built a replica of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
Fujiwara sees his art as a mixture of politics, architecture and his own biography. In the Tate St. Ives for example he reconstructed the bar of a hotel his parents ran in Spain when Simon was little. He charged the scene with erotic elements.[3]
Life
Simon Fujiwara was born in the London suburb of Harrow. His family (the mother British, the father Japanese) moved to Japan, later to Spain and finally to Cornwall, where Simon discovered his sense for art. He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and, from 2005 until 2008, art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He lives in Berlin.
Exhibitions and Reviews
- Brief biography by the Andrea Rosen Gallery: [1]
- Biography by the Guggenheim Museum: [2]
- Since 1982, Tate St. Ives [3]
- Studio Pietà (King Kong Komplex), Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City 2013, reviewed in the New York Times
- White Day, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2016 [4]
- The Humanizer, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2016, reviewed by Frieze Magazine
- Joanne, The Photographers' Gallery London 2016, reviewed by The Guardian,
- Figures in a Landscape, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2016–2017
- Hope House, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2018 [5]
- Empathy I, Esther Schipper, Berlin 2018 [6], reviewed by Frieze Magazine and Mousse Magazine
- Revolution, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris 2018–2019 [7]
References
- ^ Off Topic podcast: Roger Casement biopic, Assassin’s Creed and the future of libraries, Irish Times, May 20, 2016
- ^ Birgit Sonna: Interview with Simon Fujiwara on Merkels Puderdose in Art Magazin, June 2016 Archived 2016-06-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Tate St. Yves, 2012
- ^ "A Spire - Laidlaw Library". Projects. Mike Smith Studio. Retrieved 22 July 2019.
- ^ "Public Art Trail" (PDF). University of Leeds. Retrieved 22 July 2019.