Message from the Artist

Title: A Journey Around the Neighbourhood Globe

I interpreted the “Utopia“ in “Utopia by Design,” the theme of London Design Biennale 2016, to mean “another place that isn’t here.” This theme also suggests taking a journey around the Neighbourhood Globe – a world that exists as an object beneath our feet and an image in our heads.

I see design as something that shows people living in the current age how to move forward like a compass that is continually renewed in each time and place.

–Yasuhiro Suzuki

Message from the Curatorial Advisor

In works that approach existing things and familiar phenomena from a fresh perspective, Yasuhiro Suzuki raises questions about everyday life and our way of perceiving the world. Based on the idea of “looking at one thing as if it was another,” which has parallels with mitate, a traditional allusive method found in Japanese garden and tea ceremony, Suzuki connects “here and now” with “somewhere and sometime” in countless works and projects in which he discovers new relationships between things that would normally never encounter each other.

Widely hailed for his unprecedented work in the Japanese design world, Suzuki conceived of this installation for the London Design Biennale after reading about this year’s theme. He plans to create a spatial structure made up of objects of various sizes, drawings, and animation. Transcending dichotomies such as inside and outside, before and after, and part and whole, and systemic barriers such as the past, present, and future, the work suggests the importance of shifting our focus from our own place (everyday life) and considering the wider world. This reminds us how important it is to examine, imagine, and consider what lies between familiar and unfamiliar societies while also suggesting how important it is to experience a world that we were not previously aware of.

This exhibition will present various possibilities to open up the world with installations that exist at the intersection between familiar phenomena and the imagination.

–Noriko Kawakami