WAVE UFO

Mariko Mori

Exhibition duration: February 8, thru March 23, 2003

Opening: Friday, February 7, 2003, 7:00 p.m.

Press conference: Friday, February 7, 2003, 1:00 p.m.
The artist will be present.

At the core of our exhibition program for 2003 is the discourse on the radicalism of the artificial with its heterogeneous aesthetic, technological, and social facets.

The Japanese artist Mariko Mori (* 1967 in Tokyo, lives and works in Tokyo and New York) has for several years already been considered one of the major young representatives in the contemporary Japanese art scene. In her artificial environments she constructs visions of an ideal world: a fusion of Japanese tradition, hybrid virtual realities, and models of the future. Like a temptress from a future world Mori "landed" in the art scene in the mid-nineties. Her photos show herself, dressed like a futuristic comic book hero. They are a celebration of her as if she were a music or fashion industry icon. Mariko Mori's more recent works take on more complexity: the photos have given way to multi-layered images that produce the illusion of motion. These were followed by videos with compelling music, and last but not least a 3-D video.

The role of the make-believe star evolves into a kind of stylized psychic being. Her message is that we need to believe in utopias. Yet however they may seem, her works are neither ironic nor naive. Her fantastical visions are sensible journeys, expeditions to a realm where the rules of modern civilization have been annulled.

Mariko Mori became known for her architectural installations that visitors can enter, complex aesthetic creations that evoke the vanishing of spirituality in the face of the ever increasing influence of the mass media.

Kunsthaus Bregenz is showing the premiere of Mori's spectacular new "Wave UFO" project before it goes on tour starting in New York and moving on to hit several American museums. "Wave UFO" is a visionary work, which brings together art, science, performance, music, and architecture in a kind of integral work of art. In this project Mariko Mori has fused new technologies, computer graphics, video projections, and engineered structures in order to expand the art experience. The visitors participate in the artist's conceptions of interconnected dream worlds. In a capsule within a huge architectural sculpture of whale-like proportions (approx. 4 x 10 x 5 m), which can only be accessed via a staircase, three people can recline in spaceship-like seats for six minutes. The hallucinatory images projected on the interior walls of the

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capsule are generated by a kind of interactive bio-feedback loop that reads
the brainwaves of the participants. With the help of computer-animated video projections Mori sends the "travelers" on a trip to a spiritual cosmos that takes them through space, beyond the oceans and the Earth itself.

The concept of the work is based on the idea that all things in this world are interconnected. This should convey to the audience the vision of a "newer" world, a world in which man appears to have overcome all cultural barriers, thus enabling the individual to return to the self.

"Wave UFO" is a distillation of all Mariko Mori's work over the past few years. It is a dynamic sculptural form that hovers on the border between large-scale sculpture and bio-amorphous architecture. As a futuristic version of an integral work of art, it offers participants a multi-faceted experience involving physical, mental, and aesthetic perception. This complex work is currently in Turin, where it is still being constructed prior to being shown for the first time in Bregenz.

Kunsthaus Bregenz
Karl Tizian Platz
A-6900 Bregenz

director
Eckhard Schneider

curator
Dr. Rudolf Sagmeister

press and public relations
Birgit Albers
DW / ext. -13
b.albers@kunsthaus-bregenz.at

opening hours for the exhibition Mariko Mori
Tuesday - Sunday 10 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Thursday 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.

Image downloads
will be available soon on our press page
at www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at

Main sponsor of Kunsthaus Bregenz