Title: "Rei Naito come and live – go and live"
Artist: Rei Naito
Photos: Naoya Hatakeyama, Kenji Takahashi
Publisher: HeHe
Language: Japanese/English
Size: 29.7 x 22.5 cm
The sun makes light and shadow, the earth forms water and rocks, and the atmosphere weaves wind and rain. Rei Naito is an artist who captures the elements of nature that surround us and the small things in our daily lives. She looks at scenes and subtle phenomena that we often overlook on a daily basis, creating “primordial scenes of life”. Her meticulously conceived work with a universal perspective invites the visitor to enter a submerged state of mind.
Her exhibition “Rei Naito: come and live – go and live” at the 150-year-old Tokyo National Museum was conceived when Naito encountered the museum’s collection and architecture. She found the human soul that resonated with her own creativity in the clay objects of the Jomon period after ten thousand years had passed. The creation of these objects was compelled by feelings of awe and the desire to pray, and Naito has said that she discovered in them “compassion that permeates the spaces inside and outside of life”. Each of the clay objects — created in response to the demands of life — seems to speak to us about what it means to be human. The exhibition spaces, illuminated by natural light, evoke the realms of life and death that once existed with the sun, and the intimate harmony that endured between human and nature, and human and other living beings.
This book is also an exhibition catalogue with photographs taken of the three exhibition spaces by Naoya Hatakeyama, where time and space seem to disappear. It also includes three essays by researchers and curators and three poems by Naito, which provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the exhibition, the works, and the archaeology.
Naito’s work, which finds life in color, story in landscape, and prayer in light, reminds us of the creative process that has been ongoing since ancient times. They show the desire to create and the desire to live that has been shared by humankind and how they connect to the present.
This book shows the power of creation shared between those who lived here in the past and those who live here today.
Rei Naito
Naito was born in Hiroshima in 1961 and currently works in Tokyo. She has been creating works based on the question of, “Is our existence on the Earth a blessing in itself?” In her work, life and death are explored as something inseparable. She has been creating installations that find “scenes of our Earth-bound existence” through natural phenomena such as light, air, water, and gravity.
Her notable solo exhibitions include: One Place on the Earth (Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo, 1991); One Place on the Earth (The Japan Pavilion, 47th Venice Biennale, 1997), Being Called (Karmeliterkloster, Frankfurt am Main, 1997); Tout animal est dans le monde comme de l’eau à l’intérieur de l’eau (The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, 2009), the emotion of belief (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, 2014); the emotion of belief (The Japan Cultural Institute in Paris, 2017; Two Lives (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2017); on the bright Earth I see you (Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, 2018); Mirror Creation (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2020); and breath (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich, 2023). Naito’s permanent installations include: Being given (Kinza, Art House Project, Naoshima, Kagawa, 2001) and Matrix (Teshima Art Museum, Teshima, Kagawa, 2010).
She was recognized as one of the Promising Artists and Scholars of Contemporary Japanese Arts in the genre of installations (Japan Arts Foundation, 1994), and was awarded the First Asahi Beer Arts Award (Asahi Beer Arts Foundation, 2003), the 60th Mainichi Art Prize (2018), and the 69th Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts (2019).
<Exhibition>
Rei Naito: come and live – go and live
Dates: June 25–September 23, 2024
Venue: Tokyo National Museum
Rei Naito: come and live – go and live
Dates: September 7, 2024–January 13, 2025
Venue: Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum