Yukihiro Taguchi Moment: Performative Hills is the commisioned work for the MAM Project, where white wood panels are stripped off the gallery walls and make their way out of Mori Museum. Away from the gallery walls they become involved in a number of performative installations, their activity is recorded as a stop-motion animation and then exhibited back within museum walls. Edan Corkil, staff writer of Japan Times, interviewing the artist wonders why Taguchi is not behind the bars yet for what seems in Japan "an obstruction of public thoroughfare". Taguchi has an answer for this, he lives and works in Berlin. If I had stayed in Tokyo I would have ended up a very different artist he says. Things are done differently over there. There's an openness, a willingness to try things, and it invites experimentation.
He graduated from most prestigious of art schools in Japan, Tokyo University of the Arts. But since he was keen to avoid a trap of rental gallery system, where one spend a year doing part time jobs only to make enough money for a single show which lasts only for a week, he went to Berlin which changed his art thoroughly. Although he spent four years in oil-painting department he is influenced by Tadashi Kawamata who works in the midst of demolition and construction building new and unusual structures from scrap or reclaimed materials. You can read more of artist's confessions at: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20110630a1.html
