9/7 – 9/15 KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS Exhibition: Eating the Planet
〜exhibition of gallery かannexed to cafe〜
monade contemporary | 単子現代
August 31 (Sat) – September 15 (Sun), 2024｜Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun 14:00-19:00
Opening reception: August 31 (Sat), 19:00-21:00 → September 7 (Sat), 2024, 19:00-21:00.
Artist Talk: September 7 (Sat), 17:00 – 18:00 KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS ※one dring order
*In consideration of the approaching typhoon #10, the exhibition will be closed on August 31 (Sat) and September 1 (Sun), with an artist talk on August 7 (Sat) at 17:00 and a reception at 19:00!
〈Statement〉
This exhibition is not an exhibition of food. It is an exhibition of planetary photographs that camouflage themselves as food.
The visual “sizzle” is emphasized by cleverly transforming the colors of the planetary photographs and making them look like food products, such as ham and eggs. Sizzle is a technique in advertising photography derived from the onomatopoeic sound “sizzle” when roasting meat, and is an expression that visually enhances the appeal of food. However, have advertisements and such expressions really expressed the essence of the food?
In this exhibition, natural elements such as planetary clouds and craters are replaced with objects of consumption to explore the relationship between beauty and consumption that lies behind them. By bringing to light aspects hidden behind the glamorous sizzle, the exhibition presents a new perspective on the nature of our vision and consumption.
― KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS
〈Exhibition Information〉
monade contemporary | 単子現代 is pleased to present “Eating the Planet” a solo exhibition by KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS.
KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS has been creating and advocating new perspectives inspired by psychology, philosophy, and semiotics along with their research on perception and design. In recent years, they have published the “Semi-Fiction” series, in which planetary photographs camouflage the appearance of food in the process of image manipulation and view the planets of the solar system from the viewpoint of food and attempting to form new perspectives by publishing, exhibiting, and distributing art books.
This exhibition introduces graphic works that reexamine the relationship between advertising, consumption, nature, and beauty through photographs, posters, and objects camouflaging the food and other objects that color our everyday lives into planetary forms. Images of parfaits, pancakes, coffee, ham, fried eggs, and other foods, those of the moon, sun, and planets from NASA’s public domain, and those of nature, such as clouds and craters, permeate and camouflage each other through graphic representations.
The galaxy of databases and big data, updating and expanding at the millisecond scale, simulates, through marketing optics, the needs and desires of people becoming an island universe in an accelerated simulation, forming clusters of taste (interests and preferences), and producing hyper-realistic visual images. When needs and desires of human beings for food and consumption meet with the relentless quest for the stars together with graphic design, they sublimate into natural beauty in the cosmic expanse.
How will people’s needs and desires extend under the highly developed information capitalism and realize in the time-space of the future, generating new perspectives and images of the world’s horizon? Please join us in the joy of design that plays with everyday objects on a universal scale.
KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS https://koseko.asia/
Gitai designer, director of KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS. KOSEKO DESIGN&PRESS is a Kyoto-based designer and artist whose research on perception and design is inspired by psychology, philosophy, and semiotics. In its most recent series, “Semi-Fiction,” they have been presenting a graphic expression that views the solar system’s planets from the perspective of food by camouflaging food through image processing of planetary photographs. They aim to contribute to forming new perspectives by distributing the results through the publication of art books and exhibitions. The most recent exhibitions include “Oishii Planet Expo 2024” (2024, Osaka, Japan) and “Astronomy in Breakfast” (2022, Shenzhen, China), etc. In 2020, they received the Eric Zhu Award from the Jury of UNKNOWN ASIA.
