Jam Sessions are joint showings of works from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection and works by con- temporary artists. For our first Jam Session, we are pleased to welcome Tomoko Konoike. Konoike sees human beings as creatures undergoing repeated transformations. She carefully rethinks the types and categories represented by museums the modern period created and is trying to recast them in ways that suit our lives today. Her perspective is far from the conventional artist-centric point of view. She borrows the words and hands of people she meets when traveling and employs a host of natural phenomena, methods of the earth, as her media: the sun, typhoons, plants, insects, bacteria, thus literally bringing life to her work, creating her work, to keep on living.
As animals, each human being grasps the world with totally different perceptions. We see the world through our own umwelts. None are the same. No words are identical. No light is identical. If the arts prepare themselves for that and address it honestly, then in time a new ecosystem, filled with the senses, for a small organism, will begin to function. Instead of substituting illusions for words, let us feel our way to the small things we encounter daily, play, and quietly do our work. (Konoike)