ULTRA FACTORY: Toward the Art of Working Together [2008]
Kenji Yanobe has undergone several turning points in his artistic career. In the early works, he made machinery sculptures which had actual functions. They are based on the ideas from Japanese Anime, Manga, Tokusatsu (SFX) movies and he tried to put these ideas into the context of contemporary art. While he stayed in England for a short period as a student, he was overwhelmed with art history and art education in the Western world. From this experience, he felt a huge gap between the West and Japan and began to develop his artistic expression based on Japanese popular culture in the end of 20th century, which was full of the expressions about “the end of the world”. “Survival in the end of the world” has become his theme.
He made a debut with Tanking Machine (1990), a tank filled with physiological saline in which people can float and meditate. From the early days, devices such as tanks, shelters, suits, cars and trains have been important elements in his works. Those elements have function to expand the function of human body, such as “protect”, “ transform”, and “move”.
In 1997, while he stayed in Berlin, he accomplished a project of visiting ZONE, the area within 30km radius from Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On visiting there, he wore Atom Suit, a radiation protective equipment which he made as an homage to a Manga and an Anime, Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) (In Japan, it was translated as Mighty Atom). In prior to this project, in 1995, two catastrophic events had happened in Japan: Hanshin Awaji Earthquake disaster and sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. These events made him to conceive this project and he tried to combine his own imagination and reality by his own body and works.
Through this project he visited “hot spots” (the area of radioactive concentration) and ruined towns scattered around there and he also met old people and young children who had returned to their familia
r area. What he actually saw there was far beyond his imagination and he deeply regretted of his visiting there for his artistic purpose. From this experience of facing reality, he turned to make works to be warnings against nuclear crisis. He also began to revive himself.
After the turning into 21st century, he became a father of a son and he changed his theme from “Survival” to “Revival”. Formerly, he made devices which he wear and operate by himself. From Standa (2001), he began to make large scale sculptures which serve as monuments. He was inspired from a picture of sun drawn on the ruined wall of nursery school in Chernobyl, he began to use motifs of “sun” as an alternative of nuclear power.
Yanobe had been grown up near the former site of EXPO’70 in Osaka, which was designed as a festival of future city and had seen the process of demolition wrecking, which he called the “Ruins of the Future” and saw the process as simulation of time travel. The imagination he gained from the “Ruins of the Future” is the formative experience for his artistic activity. In 2003, he had a retrospective exhibition MEGALOMANIA at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, which was located at the former site of EXPO’70 then. He completed his Atom Suit Project (1997–2003) for the exhibition.
In 2004, he made Torayan a ventriloquist doll with a small mustache and Combover head. Torayan wear Mini Atom Suit (2003) and appears in his works to convey messages for children in the future. Cinema in the Wood (2004) is a work shaped as a theater and also serves as a nuclear fallout shelter for children.
In 2005, He made Giant Torayan, a huge work of sculpture 7.2m in height, as a part of City of Children Project at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. He began citizen participation type workshops and production of huge sculpture in studios. Through these workshops and studios, he made his projects accessible to the citizens and the local community.
Moreover, he has made stories from his imagination and his own experience, and has developed his projects based on the stories. Variable in size and structure, his projects gradually have been recognized among wider audience. In 2008, by launching ULTRA FACTORY, Yanobe started Ultra Projects, making the working processes accessible and shareable for the public.
