NEWLY OPENED EXHIBITION
History Painting: Jason Salavon
November 29 – December 28, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, November 29, 5-7pm
Artist Talk & Walkthrough: Saturday, November 30, 2-3pm
We are pleased to present History Painting, an exhibition of new work by American artist Jason Salavon. Salavon is a pioneering and internationally recognized artist who has created generative and data-driven artwork since the 1990s. History Painting employs a host of “custom software, imaginings, and elbow grease,” to reinterpret the history of the universe via eight-hundred idiosyncratic encyclopedic entries created by the artist.
With History Painting, Salavon debuts new processes that stretch and contract the understanding of generative AI, beyond its daily application into a technically dense and highly aesthetic medium in which he uses to paint these digital canvases. He says, “AI learns a universe of possibilities and it likes to stay in the center of that universe. We’ve created a tool that forces the AI out of that universe by modifying a model to make it do things that it’s not supposed to do.”
Launching from the art historical tradition of sixteenth and seventeenth century history painting, Salavon uses digital techniques he has been honing and innovating for the past thirty years to tell the story of the universe in four large panels—Origins, Emergence, Sapiens, and Modernity. These digitally layered art objects, shown in concert with looping animations made from the same prompts, exist on the cutting-edge of where, Salavon says, “the technical and the conceptual start to bleed into one another.”
Salavon’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago, among many others. Born in Indiana, raised in Texas, and based in Chicago, Salavon earned his B.A. from the University of Texas and his M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.
To learn more, click here.
RECENTLY CLOSED EXHIBITION
Tradition and Innovation: Tanabe Chikuunsai IV and Apprentices
July 26 – August 31, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, July 26, 5-7pm
Artist Gallery Walkthrough: Saturday, July 27, 2pm
We are delighted to present Tradition and Innovation: Tanabe Chikuunsai IV and Apprentices. Led by master artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, this exhibition invites the viewer to glimpse the future of Japanese bamboo art. Driven to carry on the tradition of apprenticeship in Japan, Tanabe Chikuunsai IV’s studio currently hosts 10 apprentices, seven of whom have been invited to show at TAI Modern for the first time. They are Tashima Shiun, Nakamura Emika, Honda Yoko, Sano Kayoko, Hayashi Junpei, Ichikawa Yona, and Shimizu Yuki. As bamboo is always a family affair for the Tanabe family, Tradition and Innovation also features the work of Tanabe Mitsuko, Chikuunsai’s mother and bamboo master in her own right.
The Tanabe Chikuunsai lineage is the only surviving lineage of the great lineages in Japanese bamboo art, with a studio just outside of Osaka that is currently training its fifth generation. It is a lasting commitment to tradition paired with innovation that has allowed the Tanabe family to foster the next generation of bamboo artists. And, in the art world, it is hard to miss Tanabe Chikuunsai IV. From his colossal installations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at TAI Modern in 2019, to recent international exhibitions and an ongoing collaboration with the fine fashion house Loewe, Tanabe has emerged as a leader and representative for a younger generation of bamboo artists.
The exhibition promises to be a debut of the highest caliber, with the artists expressing ideas and feelings about childhood, time, and the visceral sense of being aware of one’s own organs. The experience of the self as one with the natural world is a common theme throughout. Tanabe’s Decayed Bamboo series will make its first US appearance. In these works, the bamboo twists and tangles with a feral energy, crowned with an abstracted handle made from a withered section of felled bamboo.
“Each generation of Chikuunsai has enjoyed taking on new challenges while carrying on the tradition. Innovating tradition while carrying on tradition is a contradiction of terms and a very difficult task,” Tanabe states. “However, I believe that friendly competition with the younger generation and the discovery of new concepts will lead bamboo art to a new future.”
We are happy to host Tanabe Chikuunsai IV and apprentices Hayashi Junpei, Ichikawa Yona, and Nakamura Emika at the opening at 1601 Paseo de Peralta on Friday, July 26 from 5–7pm, with an artists’ walkthrough on Saturday, July 27, beginning at 2pm. We hope you will be able to join us for this celebration of the future of bamboo art.
To learn more, click here.
About the Gallery
TAI Gallery was created by Robert T. Coffland, a leading expert in Japanese bamboo arts in the West, who began sourcing works from contemporary masters in Japan. The gallery moved from the founder’s home to a gallery space on Canyon Road, then to its current location in the Santa Fe Railyard in 2006.
Margo Thoma purchased the gallery in 2014 and merged it with her contemporary American art gallery, Eight Modern. Rebranded as TAI Modern, Thoma and renowned bamboo expert, Koichiro Okada, continue Coffland’s mission of building museum-quality collections.
Thoma supports and promotes bamboo art in the West by serving as an advisor to Western collectors and institutions, facilitating public demonstrations, and curating bamboo art exhibitions. She is a tireless collaborator and ally with and for senior artists across Japan, and sponsors aspiring bamboo artists to participate in national competitions. She has written essays for exhibition catalogs both in the U.S. and Japan and is a frequent public speaker on bamboo art.
Works by TAI Modern artists have been placed in some of the country’s most prestigious institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Mint Museum of North Carolina; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Denver Art Museum; Museum of Art and Design; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.