Jiro Takamatsu and Hi-Red Center
This display presents three bodies of work associated with the post-war Japanese artist Jiro Takamatsu.
Takamatsu was a founding member of the performance collective Hi-Red Center, who, following in the tradition of
the Dada movement, wanted to break down the distinctions between life and art. After his involvement with Hi-Red Center in the 1960s, Takamatsu developed his own practice across a range of media, including both sculpture and photography.
The earliest works shown here are a series of images by the photographer Minoru Hirata taken as part of a Hi-Red Center performance called Dropping Event, which took place in Tokyo in 1964. Dropping Event consisted of the various members of Hi-Red Center letting everyday objects fall from the roof of a building, while Hirata photographed their actions from selected vantage points. At this time Hirata was involved with many radical avant-garde groups in Japan, and photographed performances by Yoko Ono.
Takamatsu’s sculptures Oneness of Cedar 1970 and Oneness
of Concrete 1971 belong to a series in which the artist explored the qualities and attributes of specific everyday materials.
This attentive and minimal approach to raw materials has
close affinities to arte povera, and particularly artists such as Giuseppe Penone. Takamatsu’s Photographs of Photographs 1972–3 were produced soon after his sculptures and similarly attend to the material nature of the photographs as objects. Each is shown placed or pinned so that the reflective surface of the print catches the light, a reference to the importance of light in the photographic medium.
Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998) was born in Tokyo, where he lived and worked.
Curated by Simon Baker and Shoair Mavlian
