In Venice, the 'GO FOR KOGEI' Exhibition Questions Body and Matter in an Accelerating World

As the 61st Venice Biennale unfolds, satellite exhibitions animate the city's historic palaces. Among them, 'GO FOR KOGEI' stands out for its ambition to redefine kogei (Japanese art craft) on an international scale. For this edition, the group took over a 15th-century palace belonging to the noble Pisani family, a stone's throw from the Rialto Bridge, transforming nearly 500 square meters into a showcase for about a hundred works by ten artists.

The exhibition, titled 'Body and Matter: Ethnographies of Slowness and Depth in an Accelerating Society', places at its core the relationship between the body and matter. Its artistic director, Yuji Akimoto, continues a questioning he has been nurturing for years: to what extent should the maker let matter guide the creative gesture, and how can this relationship constitute a form of resistance to contemporary frenzy? The works, spread across rooms with woodwork patinated by centuries of use, enter into dialogue with the history of the place, whose atmosphere recalls the temples and machiya of the Hokuriku region where the project originated.

The route opens with a striking visual note: a bright pink banner visible from the nearby bridge. This color, closer to the codes of contemporary Asian consumption than to traditional Venetian hues, announces a critical approach. The exhibition indeed aims to free craftsmanship from the historical hierarchy that subordinates it to fine arts, a debate theorized since the 1990s by authors such as Kaneko Kenji in Japan or Glenn Adamson in the Anglo-Saxon world. The latter notably showed how the marginalization of crafts is linked to the structures of the modern nation-state, colonialism, and the museum system.

In the context of the Biennale, where craft expressions gain visibility within pavilions and parallel events, 'GO FOR KOGEI' is part of a global movement reassessing practices long considered minor. The selected artists, mixing historical figures of the project and newcomers, explore varied materials and techniques, from lacquer to ceramics, from textiles to metal.

The exhibition, on view until the end of the Biennale, offers an immersive experience where slowness becomes an aesthetic and political stance. By choosing materiality and gesture as starting points, it offers an alternative to the dominant discourses of technological innovation and invites us to rethink the place of craftsmanship in the contemporary world.

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Written by the ADM desk based on 美術手帖. Read the original article for the full story.