2020
website, adhesive film 120 cm x 15 cm
Rejected Submissions For This Show is a work I specifically developed for the exhibition Tacker 2020. This exhibition is the second round of an application process, a shortlist of submissions for the final exhibition Erste Jahre der Professionalität at Galerie der Künstler.
I invited all applicants rejected during the first round to provide me with the portfolio they had applied with, in order to publish it on my website as part of the exhibition. The portfolios of all the artists who agreed to my proposal were available online at
hisashiyamamoto.net
for the duration of Tacker 2020, while my own content was not accessible.
My only contribution was the printed website address glued onto the window above entrance and exit of the exhibition space. This project was not selected by the jury for the final exhibition.
2019
video color, sound 12'50"
The graduation piece 10 Ideas consists of a lecture I held in front of the examination committee of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, listing all the ideas I had considered during the process and which I had chosen not to pursue. In doing so I also listed the specific reasons why each idea was ultimately dismissed. Only the very last idea was implemented, namely to address the exam situation as the very frame in which my graduation work manifests itself. It proposes a reflexion on my year-and-a-half long process prior to the exam.
The presentation was filmed and shown later as documentation in the exhibition. Visitors were able to sit on the same chairs from which the examination committee had previously made its evaluation.
2018
mounting angles, double sided tape each 12 cm x 6 cm x 6 cm
In "Galerie der Künster" the exhibition space is equipped with wooden panels to protect the walls of the historical building when hanging works.
For the group show KI_L_MUC_SA_R I attached mounting angles in every corner of the fake architecture in the space to frame the setting.
2018
MDF 140 cm x 38 cm x 50 cm
Italic leans in 4 degrees in two directions simultaneously with "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever [it] does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".
in collaboration with Ieva Jakušonoka
The show What’s Mine Is Yours assembles a series of work as result of a collaborative production process between
Ieva Jakušonoka and myself.
The show took place from June 22nd to 25th, 2017 at Atelier Sina Wagner in Schwanthalerstr. 166, in Munich, Germany.
The starting point of our collaboration was the idea to give one another the freedom to edit/modify/re-interpret an already existing work of each of us. The decision was made to take a photograph of the other’s work and use this document as a carte blanche. From there on we proceeded tossing the ball back and forth between us.
What all the four works became to have in common is the confrontation with different forms of traces, with its connotations as an evidence or surviving mark of a former existence, influence or action, or the act of following a line alongside the contours of a shape. At the same time, by working together, with no hierarchy between us, we started to blur our own traces.
2017
digital print, glass 21 cm x 30 cm
An ephemeral moment was caught on In The Bat of An Eye. We took a photograph of Hisashi’s work, a mirror hanging in the corner of a space close to the ceiling. The flash of the camera bounced off the reflecting surface and was thrown against the ceiling. There it materialised in the shape of the mirror, with a perspective distortion caused by the viewpoint of the camera. Only the photographic lense was fast enough to witness this brief phenomenon.
The image was turned with a 90° rotation clockwise and shown with a tilted panel of glass in front of it.
2017
tapestry A0
In Cut-Out our scalpel was following the margins of Ieva’s painting on a photograph, printed on an A0 sized tapestry sheet, and removed it. What is left is the visual texture of the wall where it was hanging originally, with a gaping hole, exposing the wall behind the tapestry paper.
2017
plaster 15 cm x 30 cm x 5cm
Moonwalk is the plaster cast of a forgotten footprint found on the door step at the entrance of the exhibition space. The sculpture was placed in the room’s center and was illuminated by a blueish - white spot light. The first person who had probably set foot into this space was one of the construction workers. Fortunately the concrete of the step was still soft when he entered and thus the imprint of his shoe was perpetuated for us to be found.
2017
metal mounting angles, double sided tape variable dimensions
Two different kinds of 90° angles were dealt with in Edges and Edges.
From a mathematical point of view, it is no difference, whether concave or convex, for a corner is always relative and dependant from the point of observation.
Opposed to that, in a room, you can only observe the space from the inside: you are part of the block of void, surrounded by walls. When you look at the boundaries, they are only concave.
An exception is the ledge in this space. It is at the same time a thing in the space, as well as a part its limitations.
We marked the edges of this object with mounting angles from metal in order to hold the space together.
2017
wooden frames for canvasses 26 pieces, each 38 cm x 38 cm
collaboration with students of the class of Daniel Richter, Academy od Fine Arts, Vienna
For the occasion of the group show ’GELD’ of the two classes of Daniel Richter and Olaf Metzel I built wooden frames in a certain format. The shape reflects the ground plan of the exhibition space.
Like the architecture itself, the paintings appear under the laws of foreshortening given by their form.
Each student of the class of Daniel Richter stretched his/her canvas on one of the frames and used it for his/her painting.
2016
exhibition
The group show National Whisper took place in NOrthEurope/WestGermany in Berlin from Nov 24th to Nov 27th. The displayed works were produced following the rules of the children's game "whisper down the lane" or "broken telephone". A initial work was sent to the next participant and used as a starting point for his or her contribution and so on. As I was the last in the row, I tried to outline the project. I translated all our previous e-mail correspondency into one language by using google translator and printed this as a publication which should accompany the show. Further, I offered an audio-guide for visitors: I hired a person who would walk a single spectator at a time through the show and whisper his own thoughts and interpretations on the shown pieces into the spectator's ear. The guide was only briefed with titles, year of production, materials and technique as well as dimensions of each work.
2016
Video, sound, color 29'32"
Four participants were invited to document a situation, a “happening“ for me, which I iniciated but did not see myself. The “happening“ lasted for 20 minutes and consisted of an empty room and the four participants who should document the setting they were in. When the 20 minutes were over, I picked them up. They all had the task to just give an oral report, to re-tell what happened. I made one-to-one interviews with each participant and filmed it.
2016
poster, video, text, performance
variable duration and dimension
Participants:
R.F.
K.Z.
J.K.
S.B.G.
The four participants were invited to document a situation,
a “happening“ for me, which I iniciated but did not see myself. Each of the participants had been asked to do it in a different way: J.K. was to write a report about what happened, S.B.G. was to film the situation, whereas K.Z. was to take photographs. R.F. had the task to just give an oral report, to re-tell what happened, at the presentation. The “happening“ lasted for 20 minutes and consisted of an empty room and the four participants who should document it. When the 20 minutes were over, I picked them up. The documents of the situation were shown without me editing them.
in collaboration with
Matt Glas
The exhibition space of Roundabout collective was located in a basement. There, the air humidity amounted to 80%.
Using a dehumidifier water is drawn from the air and gathered in a tank. A freezer transforms the water into ice cubes, which are then exposed on a pedestral again to the original atmosphere of the space and melt. The puddle of water evaporates and finds its way back to the circuit.
2016
digital print, light, showcase
variable dimensions
Tcelfer, which is the title of both, the work on display and the exhibition itself, reflects on the act of reflecting itself, with all its meanings and connotations (e.g. in a sense of bending back light from a surface, to mirror an image, to ponder about something). Further, Tcelfer juxtaposes the characteristics of mirrors and white cubes, both „display units“ which are per se empty from any content, but capable of containing anything.
Apart from that, Tcelfer deals with the specific situation of the place. The actual work takes place not in, but around AkademieGalerie and potentially includes all the passersby on their way to the subway or overground with subliminal methods of perception, inherent to advertisement and its placing.
For the exhibition one of the advertisement panels vis-à-vis the AkademieGalerie is rented, the poster which will be on display in the rented panel shows an image of an empty mirror. The reflection of this poster will be visible in the windows of the otherwise empty gallery space.
2015
inkjet print, pen and
carbon copy on paper
two sheets each A4
in collaboration with
Katharina Zink
and Mira Sattelsberger
I, Hisashi Yamamoto,
suggest (name / consecutively „The Artist“ ) , to withdraw his/her work (title, year, material, dimensions) from the exhibition (name of exhibition).
Furthermore I propose The Artist, as a substitution for the work which he/she is not going to put on display in the exhibition, to collaborate with me instead and to show a collaborative work of us both.
With both signatures, that of The Artist and mine, we both comply with the following points:
1. The Artist agrees on not showing the aforesaid work in the aforementioned exhibition but instead on collaborating with me.
2. I agree to accept The Artist as my collaborationist and to ascribe the half of our corporate work to him.
3. The corporate work between The Artist and myself becomes manifest in this original sheet of paper, which has to by signed by both of us, and it‘s carbon copy.
4. The Artist obtains this sheet with the original signatures, when the exhibition is over. I keep the carbon copy.
5. The Artist can not choose this sheet of paper (so his/her future half of our corporate work) as the work to be withdrawn.
6. By signing this, The Artist confirmes that he/she has read and understood what is written on this paper.
If only one or none of us gives his/her signature, then this contract is cancelled, there will be no collaboration and i will keep both papers, original and carbon copy.
2014
colour, silent,
english subtitles generated
by Youtube settings
56‘ 27‘‘
The video “Open Problems in Machine Translation“ shows a lecture by Prof. Philipp Koehn at Edinburgh University talking about the problems of machines translating information from one language to another.
The website www.youtube.com offers a subtitle function. There, the spoken language in a video can be displayed with subtitles. The language as audio information is translated into language as textual information. This operation is done by machines and often the subtitles don‘t match with what is actually said in the video.
I played the video with the settings for subtitles in English activated and filmed what happened.
2013 – ongoing
wall paint
variable dimensions
The initial point of this work were drawings of rooms on paper. The construction of graphically represented rooms follows the rules of perspectives.
In the case of Black Trapezoid, this method is applied directly on a physically existing, architectonical space.
After placing a vanishing point at the height of my own eyes on the wall, the vanishing lines are spanned from this point to the corners of the room. This builds the outlines of an imaginary wall area, which is then filled with black wall paint.
2013
hand impression
14,5 cm x 21,5 cm
An analogue camera is pointed at a piece of wall and floor.
Everything to be seen through the viewfinder of the camera is painted in real with black color.
Then a picture of this situation is taken. After that the black paint is removed, whitened and the original state before the intervention re-established. There remains nothing from this intervention except the photograph, which had been taken before from the viewpoint of the camera.
2013
mixed materials
aproximate radius:
46‘000‘000‘000 lightyears
Genpei Akasegawa, a member of the japanese avant-garde artist collective Hi-Red Center, created Canned Universe in 1964. He opened a can of crabmeat, ate the content, removed the paper label from the outside and glued it on the inner side of the can. Then he re-sealed the can with solder. Like this he tried to seal the universe inside a single container, at least conceptually.
The beta version of Canned Universe offers a physical (sculptural) solution for sealing the universe. This time the walls of the can are cut open, the metal is bended and the can as a whole is inverted completely by physical power. The cutting edges are closed again with solder.
The inner side of the can faces the whole observable universe, except the space equal to the former volume of the can and the can itself.
2013
steel
5.772m x 2.018m x 0.033m
A almost 6m long handrail leads down the slope to the basement of the Goldberg Studios in Munich. The rail parallels the slope‘s inclination. The old hand- rail is replaced by a new one, with slight di erences: Every lengths of the four stilts are increasing as the slope declines. The link angle between handrail and stilt is now 90°. Hence, the entire handrail does not parallel the slope anymore but becomes a horizontal line and visualizes the amount of decline of the slope.
2012
mixed materials
variable dimensions
On March 28th, 2012 I drove to Souma, a town in Fukushima prefecture. From the bus terminal I went to the nearest supermarket (Ouhashiya Koizumi) and there I bought a bottle of green tea, two sweets, and one pack of dried mushrooms for 571 JPY in total.
Then, I looked for a mirror and took a selfportrait with my camera. I ingested the sweets and the green tea in the bus on my way back to Sendai.
The remains of this action are the bill from the grocery store, the pack of dried mushrooms, the shoppin bag, a mask and an umbrella (which, due to the Japanese government, is supposed to block radiation), a photo on which you can recognize me wearing the mask and holding the umbrella.
These objects are displayed similarly to means of evidence together with a digital print of a map of the area I walked that day.
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