Rei naito biography of martin
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Underpinning these works is the persistent question: “Is our existence on Earth a blessing in itself?”
In the exhibition une place sur terre [One Place on the Earth] at the Sagacho Exhibit Space in 1991, R. Naito presented a work in which delicate objects made from a diverse array of materials, including plants, cloth, shells, stones and glass, were symmetrically arranged inside an elliptical white flannel tent.
Paintings in pale colours, on canvas and paper and small wood carvings of human figures only a few centimetres high, are also important ongoing works.
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Rei Naito was born in 1961 in Hiroshima. In this manner, R. Naito’s work has gradually transitioned from spaces closed off from the outside world to spaces open to both the nature of the outside world and the existence of the people in it.
Since the latter half of the 2000s, she has held solo exhibitions at multiple art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama (2009); the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum (2014); the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2017); the Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito (2018) and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2020).
It can only be viewed by one person at a time. Additionally, she created a work confronting the history of Hiroshima at the Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris (2017). In 1985, she graduated from the Musashino Art University, College of Art and Design, Visual Communication Design.
She first came to public recognition with “One Place on The Earth”, at Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo in 1991.
It is exactly these imperceptible, fleeting sensory impressions to which we hardly dare subject ourselves in this world that is governed by achievement and efficiency. The process of conceiving works and exhibitions in accordance with each space, heightens the theme of compassion emerging out of the contrasting relationships between humanity and nature, humanity and art, self and other, life and death and interior and exterior, which in turn reflect one another.
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This led to her being invited to install the same piece within the Japanese Pavilion at the 47h Venice Biennale in 1997.This early work was later exhibited around the world, including in New York, Paris, Wales, Nagoya and Venice.
Alongside being the representative of the Japan Pavilion in 1997, for the 47th Venice Biennale, she also presented Being Called, a solo exhibition in the gallery of the Carmelite Monastery in Frankfurt, Germany.
Awards received include Promising Artists and Scholars of Contemporary Japanese Arts by Japan Arts Foundation, (Installation field, 1994), 1st Asahi Beer Arts Awards by Asahi Beer Arts Foundation (2003), 60th Mainichi Art Prize (2018) and 69th Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts (2019).
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REI NAITO breath
breath challenges us to be mindful.
In Being Given the floor and ceiling of an old, and now vacant, house, have been removed, and marble rings, threads and beads are arranged inside a dimly lit space where light enters only from the lower part of the building. Possibly the events of recent years have triggered in us a desire to rethink. Currently lives and works in Tokyo.
The way the piece was viewed became a focus of discussion in itself: visitors entered the space one by one. In it, 304 pillows dedicated to the martyrs and heretics depicted in the painted fresco on the walls of what used to be the monastery’s dining hall were laid out alongside various materials and mouldings, and, as with her earlier piece viewers were only able to enter individually.
It was the first time she dedicated a work of art to those who have already passed away was created.
Though many of R. Naito’s works exist for only a limited time and in a specific place, she has also grappled with the installation of permanent works on the islands of the Seto Inland Sea. In 2001 she completed Being Given at the Kinza, the Art House Project on Naoshima Island, and in 2010 she completed Matrix for the Teshima Art Museum.
Her work asks us “Is our existence on the Earth a blessing in itself?”
Notable solo exhibitions include “Migoto ni harete otozureru wo mate”, The National Museum of Art, Osaka (1995); “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, Kanagawa (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, Ishikawa and “breath”, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich (2023.)
Permanent installations include “Being given” (Kinza, Art House Project, Naoshima, Kagawa, 2001), “Matrix” (Teshima Art Museum, Teshima, Kagawa, 2010).
So this is the right time to present to you Rei Naito in the Pinakothek der Moderne, a place for contemporary art.
With the exhibition breath by Rei Naito, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München once more, after recent projects with Gerhard Richter, Michael E. Smith, Cecily Brown, and Tony Cragg, addresses the question as to the importance of drawing in the 21st century as a driving force within the visual arts and examines its role as an existential form of expression of the human intellect and its creative energy.