Naoyoshi Hikosaka

Naoyoshi Hikosaka (彦坂尚嘉, Hikosaka Naoyoshi, born June 26, 1946, Tokyo) is a Japanese artist and one of the founders of the activist group Bikyōtō. He was an artist-theorist who critiqued Mono-ha, worked in conceptualism in the first half of the 1970s, and turned to painting from the second half of the 1970s onward.

Early life and Tama Art University Hikosaka's youth was marked by health issues, suffering from tuberculosis and witnessing his younger brother's struggle with cerebral palsy. He experienced hospitalizing bouts of pleurisy and during the long periods of convalescence he read many books such as Soren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death demonstrating an early interest in philosophy which would inform his future artistic practice. Other members included Miyako Ishiuchi and Ryuji Miyamoto. As a part of Bikyōtō, Hikosaka also became acquainted with photographers associated with the photography magazine Provoke when the two groups shared desk space at Provoke member Koji Taki's design office.

However, Bikyōtō suffered disorganization and disbandment in 1970 when the university administration cracked down on the student protestors and when the Anpo treaty was extended. Hikosaka became the chief theorist of Bikyōtō and proposed the group become revived as the “Bikyōtō Revolution Committee.” The initial five artists of this committee were Hikosaka, Hori, Nobuo Yamanaka, Yasunao Tone, and Tajima Renji (influenced by emergent Feminist discourses, Miyako Ishiuchi went in her own direction).

Floor Event (1970) It was within this context of the “Bikyōtō Revolution Committee” that Hikosaka created his landmark work, Floor Event in 1970. Addressing the internal institution of art beyond the gallery or museum, Hikosaka decided to stage his solo exhibition in his room. Hikosaka's interest in Husserl's phenomenology can be seen in his use of artistic devices to frame aspects of ordinary life, what phenomenology scholars call his “phenomenological bracketing.”

Art criticism From around 1970 onward Hikosaka also began to publish art criticism. He is perhaps most known in this regard for his “Critiquing Lee Ufan—Fascism based on the internal crisis of ‘expression’,” published in Dezain Hihyō (Design Review) in November of 1970, where he accused Lee of “apolitical mysticism that suppressed human agency amid the crisis of expression in the late 1960s.” Elsewhere Hikosaka has critiqued the material approach of Mono-ha, arguing that it cannot account for differences in information. He argues this by presenting the example of two DVDs, one containing a movie and another which is empty, but which seem to be materially identical. In “Beyond the Closed Circle: What Can We Learn From Gutai's Trajectory?” (initially published August, 1973 in Bijutsu Techo), Hikosaka analyzes the practice of Kazuo Shiraga to critque Gutai's emphasis on the activity of art making over “poesis.” Hikosaka ends the article by contemplating the works of Group “I”, which for him demonstrate a stronger sense of “praxis” than both Shiraga and Sekine. He defines praxis as where “the activity itself is the purpose” and is one “based on ‘living together’—that is, on human relations.” He goes on to write of his “attitude of adhering to nonproductive acts and the depth of the domain of nonartwork.” More recently he has used blogging, social media platforms and mailing lists to disseminate his writing as a way of questioning what art is during the age of information. Their collective endeavors manifested as exhibitions, prints, and photo books, including Group of Five's Silkscreen Revolution: A Book (1972), a one-of-a-kind photo book measuring 90 x 90cm.

In 1972 Hikosaka also collaborated with his first wife, Masako Shibata on SEA FOR FLOOR, SEA FOR WALL, and SEA FOR ROOF. This piece, which was shown at “ 5th Exhibition of Contemporary Plastic Art: Expression in Film ’72—Thing. Place. Time. Space: Equivalent Cinema” at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, was reconstructed in 2015 on the occasion of “Re: play 1972/2015 – Restaging “Expression in Film 1972” curated by Kenjin Miwa at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. This was announced at “Printing Machine,” a group exhibition of six Bikyoto artists at the Tamamura Gallery in Tokyo.

Practice by Wood Painting In 1977 Hikosaka would begin his next sustained project of “reconstructing” painting.

Hikosaka was featured in the Queens Museum's landmark 1999 exhibition, “Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s-1980s” along with Yutaka Matsuzawa, Yoko Ono, Genpei Akasegawa, Yasunao Tone, Hori Kosai and Nomura Hitoshi. He participated in the 2003 and 2009 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale where he exhibited A Tale of 42 Houses (2003) and Floor Event 2009 (2009), respectively. From 2009 to 2013 he was specially-appointed professorship at Rikkyo University Graduate School.

1970 “Floor Event No.1”, Hikosaka's own residence, Tokyo

1972 “Floor Event No.3 / Delivery Event”, Gallery 16, Kyoto

“Upright Sea”, Kyoto Shoin Hall, Kyoto

1975 “Practice by 51 Sounds”, Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo

1977 “Practice by Shiritsu”, Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo

“Practice by Wood Painting”, Shintamura Gallery, Tokyo

1981 “Practice by Wood Painting”, TOKYO GALLERY + Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo

1988 “Naoyoshi Hikosaka 1975-1988”, Gallery Te, Tokyo

1990 “Naoyoshi Hikosaka 1990 ASIA”, TOKYO GALLERY + Gallery Te, Tokyo

1992 “Cut-out Sculpture and New Upright Sea”, TOKYO GALLERY + SOKO TOKYO GALLERY, Tokyo

1993 “New Floor Event”, Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo

1996 TOKYO GALLERY, Tokyo

2000 “New Wood Painting + α”, TOKYO GALLERY, Tokyo

2001 “Origin of Naoyoshi Hikosaka”, Gallery Te, Tokyo

2002 Lee Ufan · Naoyoshi Hikosaka in Two Person Exhibition, TOKYO GALLERY, Tokyo

2007 “INTERSECTION – Three Events of NaoyoshiI Hikosaka Kyoto 1972 -”, Gallery 16, Kyoto

“VERTICAL CIRCLE: Retrospective exhibition of Naoyoshi Hikosaka”, The Softmachine Museum of Art, Kagawa

2010 “HISTORY LESSONS / The Imaginary Museum of the Imperial Palace”, MAKII MASARU FINE ARTS, Tokyo

2014 “an exhibition for no audience”, Avant-garde experimental NETART, Kanagawa

2016 “FLOOR EVENT 1970”, MISA SHIN GALLERY, Tokyo

2020 “Floor Event: Repetitions and Variations”, MISA SHIN GALLERY, Tokyo

Selected group exhibitions Source:

1969 “Plastic Artists League Exhibition”, inside barricaded Tama University campus, TokyoRe

1975 “The 7th Paris Youth Biennale”, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, Paris

1982 “The 40th Venice Viennale”, Venice

1987 “19a Bienal Internacional de Artes de São Paulo”, São Paulo

1988 “Olympiad of Art”, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul

1989 “Europalia 1989 Japan in Belgium”, Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent, Gent

1999 “Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s”, The Queens Museum of Art, New York

2000–09 “The 1st-4th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial”, Niigata

2001 “CENTURY CITY”, Tate Modern, London

2005 “Ljubljana International Biennial of Graphic Art”, Ljubljana moderna galerija, Ljubljana

2007 “The 1st Lisbon Architecture Triennale”, Lisbon

2008 “Kompira Art 2008 Toramaru Shachu”, Auditorium Kotohira-cho, Kagawa

2013 “The 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th Reverse triangular relationship Exhibition”, The Bamboo culture space, Tokyo

“Concert: Naoyoshi Hikosaka + Noise Music Concert of A.A.C.L”, Kissa Sakaiki, Tokyo

“Re:play 1972/2015 Restaging ”, The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, Tokyo

2016 “The 11th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 24th, 28th, 30th Reverse triangular relationship Exhibition”, The Bamboo culture space,

Tokyo

2017 “The Disconnection-Art Movement: An Exhibition of Simulation-Art”, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo

2018 “Travelers: Stepping into the Unknown”, The National Museum of Art, Osaka

“TAKAHASHI COLLECTION Face and Abstraction”, Kiyoharu Art Colony, Yamanashi

2019 “Group Show 2”, MISA SHIN GALLERY, Tokyo

“Who opens up the world?”, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi