Wrong Translation

This is Japanese-born international artist Yu Araki's first solo exhibition in Japan. It features a site-specific video installation entitled 'Angelo Lives', which was produced especially for Nakameguro's unusual little gallery, The Container (literally a shipping container). Araki creates videos/films rich in passionate storytelling and a quasi-documentative style, trapping the viewers and taking them on a journey, crossing lands and dimensions in a cultural espionage. 'Angelo Lives' was inspired by Araki's time spent in Spain last year. The video, a montage of filmed footage from Spain, Italy and Japan, along with historical images, paintings and maps, is a mood board, slowly drawing you into a world of associations and connections. What starts with a formal representation – a tableau referencing Casper David Friedrich's 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog' (1818), in a composition of longing and self-reflection, quickly departs into a most fictitious labyrinth of entwined allusions. Araki’s interest in the relationship between the camera, artist and viewer brings experimentation and visual celebration to his work – for example, through his concealment of the camera in his mouth, or by filming through a glass jar. Above all, 'Angelo Lives' demonstrates the artist's fixation with the way he sees his environment and the connections he forges in his head.