Kazumi Tanaka: Beyond Silence

Fridman Gallery is pleased to announce Beyond Silence, a solo exhibition at its Beacon location presenting sculpture and drawings by Kazumi Tanaka. Tanaka makes intricate works that are meditations on memory and loss. Beyond Silence features tiny musical instruments incorporating animal skulls, seashells, wood, the artist's own hair and other materials. Three of Tanaka’s ethereal indigo ink landscape drawings are also included in the exhibition.

Tanaka created some of the works in Beyond Silence for her series titled Messenger Y during a 2021 artist residency in Salem, Germany. Before her arrival, the residency staff assisted Tanaka in locating animal skulls in the woods around Lake Constance. The locations of the remains were recorded in photographs by Matthias Schenkl, two of which are on view in the exhibition. Upon arriving in Germany, Tanaka studied the materials and slowly transformed them into functional musical instruments, thereby producing new sounds and meanings which continue beyond the animals’ death. 

Tanaka’s ink drawings of woods and water represent the home or origin of the animals who transitioned into her musical instrument sculptures, while also referencing the importance of water as a resource for all life on earth. More than an illustration of a place, the drawings and the exhibition as a whole offer a nurturing psychological space to understand where we come from and our connection to the natural world.