Chim-Pom

Chim-Pom (stylized "Chim↑Pom") is an artist collective formed in Tokyo in 2005, when all the members were in their twenties. The six members are Ellie (エリイ), Ryūta Ushiro (卯城竜太), Yasutaka Hayashi (林靖高), Masataka Okada (岡田将孝), Toshinori Mizuno (水野俊紀) and Motomu Inaoka (稲岡求).^[1]

The group is somewhat influenced by Makoto Aida, as three of the members had been apprentices and Ellie had modeled for him.^[2] The collective has been described as "neo-Dadaist" and "the enfant terrible of Japan’s art world".^[3] Many of their projects have tackled provocative social themes.^[4]

History

Chim-Pom first gained attention in 2006 with a project titled "Super Rat" (スーパー☆ラット), an installation of taxidermied rats captured from Shibuya district, which were painted to resemble Pikachu, the naming a riff on Takashi Murakami's "Superflat" reading of Japanese aesthetics.^[1]^[5] Don't Follow the Wind is long term exhibition started in 2012.It takes place inside the inaccessible radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone formed after the nuclear disaster. Initiated by Chim↑Pom and co-developed with the curators Kenji Kubota, Eva & Franco Mattes, and Jason Waite. They collaborated with displaced local residents and includes 12 artists developing new work inside the zone: Ai Weiwei, Aiko Miyanaga, Chim↑Pom, Grand Guignol Mirai, Nikolaus Hirsch and Jorge Otero-Pailos, Kota Takeuchi, Eva & Franco Mattes, Meiro Koizumi, Nobuaki Takekawa, Ahmet Ögüt, Trevor Paglen, and Taryn Simon.

Solo exhibitions

2013 ‘"Hiroshima!!!!! Exhibition" Preparation Show' Hot Spot Galleries in Hiroshima City
2013 "PAVILION", Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Tokyo
2012 "Chim↑Pom", PARCO Museum, Tokyo
2012 "Beautiful World: SURVIVAL DANCE", PROJECT FULFILL ART SPACE, Taipei
2011 "LEVEL 7 feat. 'Hiroshima!!!!’,” Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, Saitama
2011 "Chim↑Pom", MoMA PS1, New York
2011 "K-I-S-S-I-N-G", The Container, Tokyo
2011 "SURVIVAL DANCE", MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2011 "REAL TIMES", MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo (traveled to Standard bookstore, Osaka)
2010 "Imagine", MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2009 "FujiYAMA, GEISHA, JAPAnEse!!,” MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2009 "Good to be human", YAMAMOTO GENDAI, Tokyo
2009 "Hiroshima!!,” NADiff a/p/a/r/t, Tokyo
2009 "Disposed Dick", Gallery Vagina (a.k.a. MUJIN-TO Production), Tokyo
2009 "Hiroshima!,” Vacant, Tokyo
2008 "Oh My God! –A Miami Beach Feeling–,” MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2008 "Becoming Friends, Eating Each Other or Falling Down Together / BLACK OF DEATH curated by MUJIN-TO Production", hiromiyoshii, Tokyo
2008 "Japanese Art is 10 Years Behind", NADiff a/p/a/r/t, Tokyo
2007 "Thank You Celeb Project – I'm BOKAN", MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2007 "Oh My God!,” MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2006 "SUPER☆RAT", MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo

Selected group exhibitions

2017 "First Things Don't Come First", curated by Native Art Department International, the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham, Ontario, Canada^[6]
2013 "SHIBUKARU MATSURI", Shibuya PARCO, Tokyo
2013 "Atomic Surplus", CCA Muñoz Waxman Galleries, New Mexico
2013 "adidas Originals PRESENTS BETTER NEVER THAN LATE", Kodachi Seisakujo, Tokyo
2013 "Now Japan; Exhibition with 37 contemporary Japanese artists", Kunsthal KAdE, the Netherlands
2013 "inToAsia: Time-based Art Festival 2013 – MicroCities", Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York
2013 "Why not live for Art? II – 9 collectors reveal their treasures", Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo
2013 "Takahashi Collection – Mindfulness", Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima
2013 "MOT collection – From Me to You –Close but Distant Journeys–,” Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
2013 "All You Need Is LOVE: From Chagall to Kusama and Hatsune Miku", Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
2012 "Artists and the Disaster –Documentation in Progress–,” Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito
2012 "The 9th Shanghai Biennale – REACTIVATION", Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art
2012 "Project Daejeon 2012: Energy", Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea
2012 "Son et Lumière, et sagesse profonde", 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
2012 "Get Up, Stand Up", Seattle Art Museum
2012 "The Angel of History – I Love Art 12 Photography", Watari-um Museum, Tokyo
2012 "Turning Around" (curated by Chim↑Pom), Watari-um Museum, Tokyo
2012 "Double Vision: Contemporary Art from Japan", Moscow Museum of Modern Art (traveled to Haifa Museum of Art, Israel)
2012 "The Fire that Doesn't Go Out", Richard D. Baron Gallery, Ohio
2012 "TPAM in Yokohama 2012", BankART Mini, Yokohama
2011 "Life, no Peace, only Adventure", Busan Museum of Art, South Korea
2011 "Villa Tokyo", Kyobashi area, Tokyo
2011 "Sky of Elpis", TOKYO DESIGNERS WEEK 2011 (TDW-ART), Tokyo
2011 "SHIBUKARU MATSURI", Shibuya PARCO, Tokyo
2011 "City_net Asia 2011: Asian Contemporary Art Project", Seoul Museum of Art
2011 "Mildura Palimpsest #8 – Collaborators and Saboteurs", Arts Mildura, Mildura, Australia
2011 "Invisibleness is Visibleness: International Contemporary Art Collection of a Salaryman – Daisuke Miyatsu", Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
2011 "Never give up!,” PASS THE BATON GALLERY, Tokyo
2010 "The 29th São Paulo Biennial – There is always a cup of sea to sail in", Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo
2010 "Asia Art Award", SOMA Museum of Art, Seoul
2010 "Roppongi Crossing 2010: Can There Be Art?,” Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
2010 "REFLECTION: alternative worlds through the video camera", Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito
2010 "Moving – The first and final group exhibition in MUJIN-TO, Koenji", MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo
2009 "Good to be a mummy", YAMAMOTO GENDAI, Tokyo
2009 "Spooky Action at a Distance: A Big in Japan exhibition of new video works from Japanese artists", Black & Blue　Gallery, Sydney
2009 "A Blow to the Everyday", Osage Kwun Tong, Hong Kong
2009 "Urban Stories: The X Baltic Triennial of International Art", Contemporary Art Centre [CAC], Vilnius, Lithuania
2009 "Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art", Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
2008 "DEATH BY BASEL", Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami
2008 "TOKYO NONSENSE", SCION Installation L.A., Los Angeles
2008 "KITA!!: Japanese Artists Meet Indonesia" Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
2008 "When Lives Become Form: Dialogue with the Future – Brazil, Japan", The Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo
2008 "New Tokyo Contemporaries", (marunouchi) HOUSE, Tokyo
2007 "Emotion Burglar", BankART Studio NYK, Yokohama
2007 "DAIWA RADIATOR FACTORY VIEWING ROOM vol.4", DAIWA RADIATOR FACTORY VIEWING ROOM, Hiroshima
2007 "Re-Act: New Art Competition 2007", Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

Awards

2007 "New Art Competition 2007", Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Award

Public collections

Mori Art Museum (JAPAN)
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (JAPAN)
The Japan Foundation (JAPAN)
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (JAPAN)
Asia Society Museum, New York (U.S.A.)
Queensland Art Gallery (AUSTRALIA)

Publications

"SUPER RAT" (Parco Publishing, 2012)
"idea ink 03 – Geijutsu Jikkohan" (written by Chim↑Pom, Asahi Publishing, 2012)
"Chim↑Pom" (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2010)
"Why we can’t make the sky of Hiroshima 'PIKA!’?” (co-edited by Chim↑Pom and Abe Kenichi, MUJIN-TO Production, 2009)

Discography (DVD)

2009 3rd DVD "Joy to Love"
2007 2nd DVD "The Making of Thank You Celeb Project – I’m BOKAN"
2006 1st DVD "P.T.A. (Pink Touch Action)”

References

^ ^a ^b Gleason, Alan (August 2011). "Nihilist Moralists for a Traumatized Japan: Chim Pom's "Real Times"". artscape Japan. Dai Nippon Printing. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
^ ""Art Cannot Be Powerless": An interview with Ryuta Ushiro". PBS Frontline. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
^ Liddell, C. B. (8 November 2011). "Art guerrillas Chim Pom stage show in a box". CNN. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
^ Kondo, Hidenori (5 May 2010). "TS57 : Chim↑Pom". Tokyo Source (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 28 December 2013. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
^ "Super Rat". Archived from the original on 16 April 2015. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
^ "Home | Schedule and Program". Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2017.

External links

[Gleason-1] Gleason, Alan (August 2011). "Nihilist Moralists for a Traumatized Japan: Chim Pom's "Real Times"". artscape Japan. Dai Nippon Printing. Retrieved 27 December 2013.

[Frontline_interview-2] ""Art Cannot Be Powerless": An interview with Ryuta Ushiro". PBS Frontline. Retrieved 27 December 2013.

[Liddell-3] Liddell, C. B. (8 November 2011). "Art guerrillas Chim Pom stage show in a box". CNN. Retrieved 27 December 2013.

[Kondo-4] Kondo, Hidenori (5 May 2010). "TS57 : Chim↑Pom". Tokyo Source (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 28 December 2013. Retrieved 27 December 2013.

[Artist_website-5] "Super Rat". Archived from the original on 16 April 2015. Retrieved 20 April 2015.

[6] "Home | Schedule and Program". Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2017.

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