Born in 1975 in Tochigi, Koki Tanaka graduated from Tokyo Zokei University (BFA) in 2000 and Tokyo University of the Arts (MFA) in 2005. Currently live and works in Kyoto, Japan.
In his diverse art practice spanning video, photography, site-specific installations and interventional projects, Tanaka visualized and reveals the multiple contexts latent in the most simple of everyday acts. In his early object-oriented works, Tanaka experiments with ordinary objects to explore ways offering a possible escape from our everyday routine. Later in his works, Tanaka asking the participants to collectively navigate tasks that in and of themselves are out of the ordinary, he then documented behaviors that were unconsciously exhibited by people confronting unusual situations, such as one piece of pottery made by five potters and a piano played by five pianists simultaneously, seeking to reveal group dynamics in a micro-society and temporal community. Following the disaster on March 11. 2011 in Japan, Koki Tanaka has employed a variety of methods to produce works on the relationality that arises between human beings, there are what Tanaka calls “collective acts”: experiments of various sorts which still lack a fixed destination.
Koki Tanaka’s recent solo exhibitions include: Vulnerable Histories (A Road Movie) , Migros Museum, Zurich Switzerland, 2018; Provisional Studies (Working Title), Kunsthaus Graz, 2017; Poet and Potter, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2016; Provisional Studies: Action #5 Conceiving the Past, Perceiving the Present, The Showroom, London, 2016; Possibilities for being together. Their praxis, Art Tower Mito Contemporary Art Gallery,Mito-shi, Ibaraki, 2015; A Vulnerable Narrator, Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin, 2015; Abstract Speaking – Sharing Uncertainty and Collective Acts, Japan Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2013 ect.
Tanaka has been showing widely, the recent exhibitions he participated in including: Action! Kunsthaus Zurich,
2017; Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Münster, 2017; Viva Arte Viva, 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2017; Liverpool Biennial 2016, Liverpool, 2016; Trace of Existence, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2016; Mobile M+: Moving Images , M+, Hong Kong,
2015; Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, others, Kyoto, 2015; Positions, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2014.
Koki Tanaka received a Special Mention for National Participation at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013 and the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year 2015 award.
Personal website: www.kktnk.com
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