Statement

Diffusion of Nature
Soil and Dreams

We are pleased to present "Diffusion of Nature 2023: Soil and Dreams," an exhibition of the results of last year’s Kumonodaira Mountain Lodge Artist-in-Residence Program (AIR), as we did last year. In 2022, we held a similar exhibition in Tokyo featuring the 13 artists who participated in the AIR program in 2020 and 2021. Thankfully, many people visited the exhibition. This year, we will hold a traveling exhibition of the results of the 2022 AIR participating artists and a group exhibition of the past participating artists.

With the cooperation of WATOWA GALLERY (Asakusa and Shibuya, Tokyo) and GASBON METABOLISM (Hokuto City, Yamanashi Prefecture), the exhibition has been expanded to three venues in Tokyo and Yamanashi Prefecture.
Through the diverse perspectives of artists traveling to Kumonodaira, the remotest region of the Northern Alps, this project explores the question, "What does nature mean to us?".
The meaning of all "nature" is latent in human history. From the time ancient hunter gatherer societies began to “overcome their environment,” to the period after the Industrial Revolution when people began to recognize the destructive potential of technology and began to advocate the protection of nature, up until the present day when the human body itself has been diluted as a medium (subject) for recognizing the environment (spatial and local) by reliance on digital systems.
The environment is a foe to be feared, a resource, something that surrounds our lives, beauty to be protected, a chaotic phenomenon itself, a collection of mechanisms that promote generation and decomposition, an ego to be regained, and a destructive self. In this age of environmental crisis and resource shortage, we are confronted with the complex contradictions of a civilized world in which life cannot be sustained without destroying the living environment around us, even after going through all the meanings of nature.
For us, the view of nature that is unique to Japanese society is also an important theme.
Since prehistoric times, Japan, as an island nation rich in nature, has developed its own culture and spiritual world with animistic sensibilities. Today, however, we have passed through a period in which nature was both a resource and a constraint on daily life, and since the modern era, which has seen an external dependence on resources and an inclination toward industrial development and a free economy, what should we see as the actual shape of a society that has rapidly lost its sense of ethics toward the environment?

In the area surrounding the mountain lodge, despite the outdoor boom, the reality is far removed from creative engagement with the value of "nature," including the (neglected) critical conservation system of Japan's national parks, destructive renewable energy policies within the nationwide, and the Fundamental Plan for National Resilience. In the background, there is a dominant mindset of "taking it for granted" due to the abundance of the natural environment in Japan. This has prevented the stimulation and awareness of artistic, scientific, ideological, and economic values surrounding nature that could withstand the weight of modernity. It has had long-lasting effects. The dependency on natural resources at the subsistence level was dissolved, and at the same time, the ancient sense of beauty, faith, quickly receded. The historical mental structure that pursued a sociality that could be described as a short-term over-adaptation to free economy and industrialization without the process of autonomous value judgment also shows the limits of animistic beautification.

What will we find in nature?
The theme of "nature" lies in front of us like a crossroads of all values, lands, and times.
This exhibition is oriented toward encouraging a small stirring in our perspective on nature through confronting the works of the participating artists, which are clothed in a realistic sense of the landscape and ecosystem of Kumonodaira, located in the deepest part of the northern Japanese Alps. What will our senses perceive by looking closely at the harmony, circulation, and chaos there? What kind of dynamism will the mountains, the stage of AIR, portray?　What kind of dynamism will the city, the exhibition space, portray? And what about the city, the exhibition space?　What will the distance and commonality of nature in the countryside depict?

The subtitle of this project is "Soil and Dreams" as an echo that embraces "nature" as an existence between life and inorganic substances, body and environment, city and mountain, concept and reality, phenomenon and material, and as an existence that seems to have clear boundaries but has none.
We hope that this project will help you discover a new view of nature that will bring harmony and creativity to the world in the future.