Galerie Christophe Gaillard Brussels is delighted to present an exhibition devoted to the Japanese avant-garde artist Tetsumi Kudo (1935-1990). Tetsumi Kudo is considered one of the key figures of the radical Anti-Art movement in Tokyo and is closely associated with the New Realists in Europe. The artist’s oeuvre also continues to exert an important influence on contemporary art practices.
‘Art must be one of the media that serve to provoke doubt and defiance in us: it is a provocative communi- cation between you and me, who are living in the septic pit of technology. In this sense, art is a maquette through which we reflect, and question everything. Doubt everything. What is our place in the universe? What is human freedom in the universe? What is individual freedom in society?’ (Tetsumi Kudo, Paris, 1971)
Tetsumi Kudo was born in Osaka in 1935. His earliest memories are deeply marked by the remnants of World War II and the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His oeuvre bears witness to this trauma.
Besides the paintings and three-dimensional works he made from found objects, Tetsumi Kudo organised performances since 1957, which he himself described as ‘Anti-Art’ (Han-geijutsu). Philosophy of Impotence (1960-1961), his first major series, highlights the particularities of his artistic universe: provocation and questioning whether there is room left for human liberties in an ultra-mediatised society.
In 1962, Tetsumi Kudo left for Paris after winning the Grand Prize in the Second International Young Artists Exhibition in Tokyo. His rebellious attitude against the dominant ways of thinking opened up doors to the Parisian art world. His performances, attended by influential figures such as Marcel Duchamp and the gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend, gained him increasing recognition. In 1964, Dutch curator Wim Beeren included the artist in the exhibition on the New Realists at the Gemeente Museum in The Hague. More than just recognition in Europe, his arrival in Paris also added a new dimension to his work: a scientific approach was added to his critical questioning of society. Kudo’s research focused on the relationship between natural phenomena and the human supremacy that could be exerted on them. In doing so, he strongly rejects the hierarchies implicit in European Humanism and emphasised a world in which ethical values have given way to material goods.
Often taking the form of cages, greenhouses or terrariums, Tetsumi Kudo’s biomorphic sculptures reveal the threats posed by nuclear power, increasing technology and consumer society. Kudo mixes the organic with the inanimate as a way of stimulating our environmental awareness. In his cages, he presents humanity trapped in the race towards development. The rebellious artist uses abject images consisting of human excre- ment or limbs and combines them with household objects, transistors and electronic circuits to criticise the unrestrained consumerism inherent to the post-war era.
However, Tetsumi Kudo’s vision on humanity’s self-destruction and ecological decay is surprisingly humorous, in which the artist affirms the ability for life to come into being despite adversity. His influence can not only be seen in the work of renowned artists such as Paul McCarthy, Takashi Murakami and Mike Kelley, but also in a new generation of artists concerned with climate change, genetics and technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Tetsumi Kudo participated in the 1976 Venice Biennale and the 1977 São Paulo Biennale. His work was also featured in major exhibitions around the world dedicated to the Japanese avant-garde, notably in Paris at the Centre Pompidou in 1986 and in New York at the Guggenheim Museum in 1994 and the Museum of Modern Art in 2012.
Renewed interest in Tetsumi Kudo’s work has led to major institutional exhi- bitions in Italy during the Venice Biennale at Arsenale (2022), in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2020) and the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis (2008), in Denmark at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek (2020), in Germany at the Fridericianum in Kassel (2016), in Japan at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (2014) and in France at La Maison Rouge in Paris (2007).
Tetsumi Kudo’s work is held in the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou and the Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Museum of Arts in Osaka and M+ in Hong Kong, among others.
