KOKUFU Osamu
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"Parabolic Garden"
Osamu Kokufu has produced large-scale sculpture that incorporate plants and entire ecosystems into vehicular motifs. To detach plants from the earth’s surface. This sort of act has become noticeable as an awareness common throughout the works Osamu Kokufu has been undertaking in recent years. Taking manmade objects such as bicycles, propellers, boat sails, parabolic antennas, and other familiar items of our modern urban lives, and joining them with plants from the natural world, at times Kokufu’s works seem, with their architectural-scale manifestations of “worlds that belong to no one”, to be completely unbounded by the standard values and sensibilities of our everyday world, like “moving gardens that wander over the earth”.
Layering critical inquiry and imagination with regard to diverse energies of the past, present and future, Kokufu maintains an awareness of diverse contradictions and hardships while continually creating devices that address the basic conditions of life. He does this to gain an external view of the workings of humanity, whose habitat is limited to an extremely narrow zone on the earth’s surface, and to pose questions with regard to the energy needed to support human activity within that zone. Moreover, this work is itself the borderline between the illusions and the realities of haphazardly projected, diverse images of people living in chaotic societies, and further, a ritual of rapport for knowing oneself through interacting with plants.
Biography
1970
Born in Kyoto Prefecture
1994
Completed the Graduate course in sculpture at Kyoto City University of Art
1993~
Participated in Solar Power Lab, art project with a solar car
1999
Participated in the HAAS Project-Harnessing the Sun: A journey Across America by Solar Car
Solo Exhibition
2010
Osamu Kokufu : Parabolic Garden, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka
Osamu Kokufu : Surreal instruments, ART SPACE NIJI, Kyoto
2009
ACG eyes 3 : Osamu Kokufu -ROBO Whale-, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka 2008
Osamu Kokufu/ KOKUFUMOBIL, ART SPACE NIJI, Kyoto
(‘94,‘06)
Osamu Kokufu: move to moving, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Nagano
2007
Premonition–KOKUFUMOBIL-Kokufu Osamu, Space B, Osaka Seikei University Faculty of Art and Design, Kyoto 2005
KOKUFUMOBIL, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka
2001
KOKUFUMOBIL: Virtual Past→Future, The site of Maebashi Fire Defense Agency building
Group Exhibition
2011
TRA : EDGE OF BECOMING, Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia
(- 27 Nov., '11)
Motoko Art Train, Motomachi Koka-shita(under the elevated railroad), Kobe, Hyogo
2010
ROKKO MEETS ART, Rokko Garden Terrace, Hyogo
Chiriki: Art imagination in KOBE, Hyogo('06,'08)
2009
First Passage, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka
KOBE Biennale 2009 Invited artists Exhibition:
LINK - Flexible Deviation, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
Eco & Art, Gunma Museum of Art, Tatebayashi
2008
RIC Art Capsule, Rokko Island, Kobe ('07-'03)
ARTS×TECHNOLOGY, Machi juu Art in Kitakyushu 2008, Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka
Osaka Art Kaleidoscope 2008, Osaka City, Osaka
2007
The Vehicles of the future, ROBOTHINK, Robot Museum in Nagoya, Aichi
the other side of KYOTO ART MAP 2007, Kyoto Art Center
Selected Artists in Kyoto -2007 New Wave-, The Museum of Kyoto
2006
Toride Art Project 2006, Ibaraki 2005
art-life vol.4 - Paradise Time - Shinji Ohmaki × Osamu Kokufu, Spiral, Tokyo 2004
New Letters from Kyoto 2004, Katsura Campus of Kyoto University
MOVIL”VJ car”, Kyoto Art Center
2003
Art Court Frontier, ARTCOURT Gallery, Osaka 2002
W.F.O.A.P., Rokko Island, Kobe ('96,'97,'00) 2001
The 16th National Festival GUNMA 2001 2000
Art Contact, Nagoya Citizen’s Gallery Viewpoint of Galleries 2000, Osaka Contemporary Art Center 1999
Keep moving: Journey of Spirit, Gallery SOKAWA, Kyoto 1998
Keep moving: Journey of Spirit, Aichi Arts Center, Nagoya
INSECTOPIA, Nagoya Municipal Administration Museum
1997
conversion table, Nagoya Municipal Administration Museum
('95,'93) 1996
Pilot Farm, ART SPACE・NIJI, Kyoto
1994
PREVIEW, Gallery PREVIEW, Kyoto ('93)
1991
tabula rasa, Kyoto City Shijo Gallery
ROBO Whale, 2008-09
"LINK - Flexible Deviation", Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, 2009
Electric Tricycle, 1994-2004
The three wheeler is powered by a 48volt-800watt electric motor.
photograph:Seiji Toyonaga
 
"KOKUFUMOBIL",
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AENEAS Wilder
AKIYAMA Yo
BOTAN Yasuyoshi
FUKUMOTO Shihoko
FUKUMOTO Fuku
FUJIMOTO Yukio
KAMEI Yoichiro
KAWASHIMA Keiju
KURANUKI Toru
KURITA Koichi
KOKUFU Osamu
KOBAYASHI Rikuichiro
MIZUTA Hiroshi
MURAKAMI Saburo
NISHIDA Jun
NISHINO Kozo
NOMURA Hitoshi
OTA Saburo
SHIOYASU Tomoko
UEMATSU Keiji
USAMI Keiji (Japanese only)
UCHIUMI Satoshi
UCHIDA Haruyuki (Japanese only)
YANAGISAWA Akira
YAMANO Chisatoi
YANOBE Kenji
YORIGAMI Kuri
WATANABE Nobuko
Yagi Art Management, Inc
ARTCOURT Gallery
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and major holidays.
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