Yutaka Kikutake Gallery is pleased to present “Body Object Thing Matter” by Madoka Furuhashi. The exhibition marks the artist’s first solo presentation by the gallery, in which two separate explorations, made primarily in Italy and Indonesia, are rearranged to a new single form of installation.

Furuhashi, who previously studied architecture before completing her masters in art in the UK, carries a site specific research practice, which revolves around objects that exist closely with the everyday. Being prompted by her visit to a large scaled quarry in the outskirts of Brescia in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy in 2015, she begins to consider the process of manufacturing in which raw materials are made into products, particularly in relation to the force of labor that gives rise to it.

Dual Physicality

Labor is an energy and is an entity without materiality. The energy could however be considered, for a certain school of economics, not as limited to the context of manufacturing where raw materials are physically transformed into products but as that which is indispensable in every means of production, also as a raw material.

Labour thus harbors a materialistic aspect. And perhaps quite obviously, since labor is derived from human activity, it indeed possesses a bodily aspect. From these respects, I began to imagine what kind of knowledge could be obtained regarding our present time, in perceiving this “energy without entity” as “object and body” — in the same manner by which archaeologists attempt to surmise the communities in the distant past through relics. Alongside it, I also imagined the possibility the consequences of postindustrialization being herein described.

Madoka Furuhashi

Raw Material, Goods and Human Body, which is comprised of limestone that is only partially processed after being mined at a quarry in the province of Yogyakarta, Indonesia and casted lime which is as well mined in the same province, is a work that the artist intended "to capture (the bodily) physicality which has no specific figure or form.” As the result, it presents the very process by which objects are made, suggesting the possibilities of transformation contained within the pure material. The work also enables us to see the circumstances surrounding the process of transformation, as being gathered from the everyday. These objects inherently carry traces and memories of people, as like that of archaeological relics. They incessantly attract attention to listen to the narratives otherwise unheard and their ambiguously fragmentary bodily appearance is a place for pleasant bemusement that holds no point of convergence.

Through her explorations in this exhibition, Furuhashi extends her research to the ‘astronomical’ concept of labor, involved in the mining of virtual currency, which in itself, is devoid of actual entity.

Madoka Furuhashi was born in 1983 in Nagano, Japan. After completing her studies at AA School of Architecture (London, UK) in 2010, Furuhashi attended the Royal College of Art (London, UK) where she received her Masters in Fine Art in 2013, and currently continues to her independent research whilst taking leave of absence from the Fine Art Research (PhD) program. He recent solo exhibitions include, “Raw Material, Goods and Human Body” iCAN (2017), “Il Quarto Stato” Kusthalle Brixiae (2015), “Dekunobo Fushiana” Shiseido Art Gallery, Jali Wahlsten at Micawber Street (2014).