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Tetsugo Hyakutake: Ephemeral Existence

Presented by Gallery 339 at Gallery 339

March 8-May 7, 2011

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Gallery 339 is pleased to present Ephemeral Existence, an exhibition by Tetsugo Hyakutake. In Ephemeral Existence, Hyakutake explores the contradictions inherent in the Japanese landscape and how those contradictions offer clues to understanding Japan today. As a child of Japan’s “lost decade,” the period following the bursting of Japan’s asset bubble, Hyakutake has struggled to understand what it means to be Japanese in today’s world. Focusing primarily on industry and infrastructure, he seeks to decipher recent Japanese history and culture through the structures that best exemplify it. The grandeur of the structures suggests his admiration for the role that industrialization played in making the Japan of today: a manufacturing superpower, a country rebuilt from the ashes of the Second World War. Yet the images are not robust celebrations of national pride. They have an ephemeral quality, as if they might disperse in the night air—beautiful dreams rather than steel and concrete. The industrial miracle of the post-war era clearly returned Japan from defeat to a remarkable economic victory, but Hyakutake ponders whether the price was too high and the victory too fleeting.