"Nature will always give us something, but it is never the same: a zen philosophy illustrated with the art it was inspired by. This time it is pixelated, digital and moving."
From September 19th until October 23rd, Sato Gallery presents its 3rd hors les murs exhibition at La Samaritaine Paris. This time presenting the exciting Japanese artist collective: EXCALIBUR.
Between the building of La Samaritaine and Japan we can find a not so obvious but firm connection: the Art Nouveau, a movement that amongst others took inspiration from the Japonism and its woodblock printing. It was introduced in Europe at the end of the 19th century and became a big fascination. La Samartaine was part of this new trend and the façade and walls of the building were painted in a flamboyant Art Nouveau style around 1904.
For their exhibition EXCALIBUR brought homage to the Art Nouveau frescos on the walls on the top floor inside. The exhibition is titled Fūkō Hibi Arata, which doesn’t translate easily but roughly means “the light and wind are new every day”. Nature will always give us something, but it is never the same: a zen philosophy illustrated with the art that was inspired by. This time it is pixelated, digital and moving.
The subject of EXCALIBURS works is just like the walls of Samaritaine, the peacock: a bird coming from Asia that originally didn’t exist in Europe.
On the big screen, we find an animation similar to a ‘makimono’ – an horizontal type of Japanese hand roll -, which traditionally reads from right to left, but EXCALIBUR wanted to do it from left to right to keep their signature reference to video games. This way, the animation becomes like a raster scroll, a technique in computer graphics, where the background images moves past the camera more slowly than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth.
In the bottom of the animation iconic buildings of Paris pass by.
Besides the animation, we can find a triptyque of physical artworks in a similar Art Nouveau style, representing peacocks. These works are connected to an augmented reality (AR) content that the audience can experience by using their mobile phone, you will find animated elements such as butterflies and flowers moving.