ALIVE : GUTAI, Postwar avant-garde art movement and modern punk SHODO

2024.6.6(Thu) - 7.20(Tue)

12:00 - 19:00

Closed:Sunday, Monday

​L'atlas, Paris

4, cour de l’Île Louviers, 75004 Paris, France

Since the mid-1960s, as a member of the Gutai Art Association, Sadaharu Horio began to seek the meaning of art within everyday life’s ordinary routines. His most well-known piece, Ironuri, [Paint Placements] involves selecting one color from acrylic paints each day and layering it onto works hung throughout his studio, with a note of each piece’s start and end days. Horio’s two-dimensional One-Minute Method series entailed Horio making 30 works within one minute each morning.

Untitled / A Tale of 1000 GO 1000 Pictures, exhibited today, originates from his inspiration to paint pictures of a « thousand-pieces », which he believed was possible to achieve if he used a size, a thousand « go », a Japanese format equivilant to the size of a postcard). Based on this idea, Horio used wall scraps from event venues to improvise one thousand different-sized paintings with his friends in Nara city in 2016. The energy of the artist and his deep contemplation on daily activities are felt from this work, breathing a new life into waste materials, and leaving a profound impression on the viewer. These series were featured in the catalogue raisonné published by the Sadaharu Horio Memorial Foundation in 2023.

Lintalow Hashiguchi was born in Nagasaki in 1985, around the same time when Horio began to affirm his artistic style. Under the influence of punk rock, Lintalow began to create art using calligraphy, which he used to do as a child, expressing unarticulated daily emotions with unique symbols. Inspired by the words of modern calligrapher Yuichi Inoue, Calligraphy is art for everyone, he began his artistic journey by abandoning expensive brushes. Instead, he uses towels and his entire body to create large-scale works.

Lintalow Hashiguchi’s artworks, influenced by post-war avant-garde, mingle with artworks by Sadaharu Horio, who continued his artistic work as an avant-garde activist. In the chaos of the modern world, the presence of these two artists leaves a profound impression on the viewer. They are artists who do not avert their eyes from their struggles with the purpose of seeking truth. Their art comes as a choc and an awakening to us ; it feels as if our innate wildness is being called forth.