Shimabuku, the artist who makes people fly and play octopuses

Santander,

Curiosity is an impulse that should be at the origin of any artistic practice. Asking questions, raising them, leaving the door open so that the viewer can ask themselves, in turn, new questions… In short, arouse the desire to discover and experience new things. In the case of Shimabuku, a renowned Japanese artist whose work is exhibited at the Botín Center until March 9, we can say that curiosity is one of the foundations of his entire practice, based more on relationships with the environment than on creating objects. concrete.

“Observing daily life and finding something special is something natural for me,” says the artist. His works, affective and often humorous, start from an anecdote, a conversation, a trip to a new place… and are developed through experiments in natural and public spaces. Experiments that propose an empathetic and spontaneous way of being in the world, answering a simple question as a challenge: “What would happen if I…?”

In “Octopus, citrus, human”, the exhibition that has just opened in Santander (his first institutional exhibition in Spain, and the largest carried out to date on his work), we find several examples of this singular and performative way of proceeding. , which connects individuals from different communities with each other and with the environment, eliminating any type of hierarchies by showing the same interest in all of them. For the Botín Center he has created Shimabuku (Kobe, 1969) three new works for which he has involved himself with the city, with anonymous inhabitants, with local artists and even with the octopuses of the Bay of Santander. For the latter, as an offering and based on the original idea of ​​a 2019 work, he has carried out an experiment consisting of placing 50 colored vessels created by himself underwater and observing the interactions of the octopuses in that scenario. . As a result, a video has been obtained, Going to meet the Octopuses of Santander (2024), which has been recorded by a team of divers joined by Shimabuku himself.

Botín Center (Santander). Shimabuku exhibition: octopus. citrus, human, 2024. Go meet the Santander octopuses, 2024.

Although he has worked with different animal communities, as we can see in other works present in the exhibition, such as Exhibition for the Monkeys (1992), Shimabuku has a special interest in octopuses and their behavior. The artist has stated on some occasions how these cephalopods are a very familiar animal to him because they are abundant in the Kobe Sea, where he grew up, even going so far as to say that he has always wanted to be friends with one…, and that whenever he travels to A coastal city wonders what the octopuses will be like there and what the relationship between them and people will be. Hence the prominence of this animal in the exhibition and in its title. Reference is also made to two other communities: the human community, for which the artist has created a beautiful and poetic performative installation, and the citrus community, to which the last room of the exhibition is dedicated.

Flying Pepole (Santander) It is a work made up of a multitude of kites with life-size human shapes, handmade by inhabitants of Santander and Cantabria in collaboration with Shimabuku and several local artists. In addition to the kites, which can be seen filling one of the walls of the room, the work is presented accompanied by a video that shows the collective flight that took place on Sunday before the opening of the exhibition in the outdoor amphitheater of the Botín Center.

“When I fly a kite with my shape, I notice a strange sensation of astral projection. And seeing myself flying in the sky, I have a feeling of euphoria, almost like courage. I decided to let the people of Santander experience that special feeling. I asked each of the people who had gathered there to make a kite of themselves,” the artist writes in the explanatory poster of the work.

Botín Center (Santander). Shimabuku exhibition: octopus. citrus, human, 2024. People flying (Santander), 2024

For its part, the installation Something that Floats / Something that Sinks (2024), is made up of a series of tanks with water and various citrus fruits (from the Todolí Citrus Fundació) that capriciously float or sink. This strangeness, all fruits being of the same kind, caught the attention of Shimabuku, who decided to create this work so that people could also experience this natural mystery.

Apart from these recent pieces, produced specifically for the occasion together with the Botín Foundation, in the exhibition we find other previous works in which Shimabuku generates improbable encounters between diverse entities, wandering and exploring different places in Japan and other parts of the world to create their social and spatial experiments. It is his way of facing his concerns and asking himself what he can do that is special in each place. We see it in Cucumber Journey (2000), about a slow boat trip between London and Birmingham, in which he raises the question of whether making pickles on a boat is art; or the comic Shimabuku’s Fish & Chips (2006), his particular version of this British dish, documenting the underwater journey that a potato undertakes to meet a fish; or in some of his photographic works such as Symbiosis (hyacinth & black gold fish) (1992); Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere (1994), or Sitting on the Wave (1998).

Botín Center (Santander). Shimabuku exhibition: octopus. citrus, human, 2024. Sitting on the wave, 1998

All of these open experiences that Shimabuku has carried out over the years have been documented through photographs, videos, sculptures or texts, which are shown to the public in exhibitions such as this one at the Botín Center, where the conventions established between nature, culture, process, work of art or audience are altered in a playful way, presenting us with a new way of looking at the world, perhaps from a more creative prism, close to nature and in which we can still maintain our capacity for wonder.

“Shimabuku: octopus, citrus, human”

LOOT CENTER

Albareda Dock s/n. Pereda Gardens

Santander

From October 5, 2024 to March 9, 2025

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