Yukihisa Isobe

Yukihisa Isobe (磯辺行久, Isobe Yukihisa) (born 1935) is a Japanese artist whose practice has been shaped by his professional interest for ethical ecology. Active and relatively successful as a young painter in the post-war avant-garde, Isobe appeared to abandon his artistic practice when he moved to New York in 1965 and began a career in urban and ecological planning. However, Isobe maintained his passion for the visual arts and began creating two-dimensional works again in the 1990s that now employed a graphic vocabulary of scientific signs and forms. Since its inaugural edition in 2000, Isobe has contributed monumental environmental installations to the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, notably Where has the river gone? in 2000, revealing to spectators man-made changes in the landscape.

Biography

Artistic beginnings and early career: 1950s-1965 Isobe was born in Tokyo in 1935. After being introduced to the artist Ei-Q while a student at Ueno high school, he joined the Demokrato artists association (デモクラート美術家協会) and was its youngest member. The group, which advocated for artists' creative liberty, was active from 1951 to 1957, and included notable figures like On Kawara, Ay-O, Toneyama Kojin, and Izumi Shigeru.

Isobe began studying painting at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1954, while continuing to frequent Ei-Q, a particularly important influence on the young painter. Curator Motoi Masaki has stated that the young artist struggled to make sense of their differing approaches, which were diametrically opposed: the university, with its "worship of technical mastery", ran counter to Ei-Q's belief in abandoning conventional modes of expression.

At a solo exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery in 1964, Isobe exhibited his geta-bako (shoe cabinet) series.

Move to New York and career change: 1965-1975 Isobe moved to New York in 1965 and stopped most of his artistic production shortly thereafter. He received a work permit in 1967 and that same year began working for the New York Human Resources Administration. In 1969, Isobe created Floating Sculpture, a parachute supported by wind currents in perpetual motion, realizing several artistic projects and performances with the parachute as apparatus.

In 1968, his blooming interest in ecology led him to enter the Regional Planning Department as a postgraduate student at Pennsylvania University.

Isobe graduated in 1972 after completing his thesis, entitled "An Ecological Planning on the Therapeutic Community", inspired by his work on the Phoenix House.

Isobe's large two-dimensional works created in the 1990s, called the Ecological Context series, are dynamic collages, with maps often being used as a starting surface. Arrows, crosses, and other signs and geometric forms are cut from different materials, such as cloth, cardboard, sails or parachute. Isobe's subsequent interventions at the Triennale, such as Monument of Mudslide (2015) and Monument of Siphon (2018) have similarly rendered visible man-made environmental changes that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Legacy at the SoKo Museum 2015 marked the opening of the Isobe Yukihisa Memorial Echigo Tsumari Kiyotsu Soko Museum of Art (SoKo) in Niigata. The institution, established within the framework of the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial, is housed in a gymnasium of a former primary school. It aims to be an alternative space for the presentation of large-scale contemporary artworks.

In 2018, work was completed on the wing of SoKo designed specifically to display Isobe's many works from the 1950s onwards. Triennale director Fram Kitagawa sought out Isobe's guidance when first planning the festival as both an artist and an ecological planner, and Isobe's work has featured there since its first edition in 2000. As such, Isobe is given a place of honor at the Triennale.

Collections and selected exhibitions Isobe's works can be found in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, and the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques.

Selected group exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions