BURIED TREASURE: Taro Shinoda

Artist Taro Shinoda presents his new installation BURIED TREASURE at the Gallery at REDCAT. The exhibition is the culmination of a three month-long residency in Los Angeles funded by the Asian Cultural Council.

The work of Taro Shinoda often engages themes of science, adaptation, and desire. During his residency in Los Angeles, Shinoda constructed a trailer based on an engawa, the traditional viewing platform that separates architecture, or the domestic space, from the garden, or enchanted space. A manmade attempt to represent the universe through an ideal landscape, the traditional Japanese garden is a recurring theme in Shinoda's work. With his engawa hitched to a 1987 Ford Ranger, the artist traveled to the Navajo Nation, up the Pacific coast past Big Sur, and east to Yosemite National Park. Taking his mobile engawa into the landscape of the American west, the artist considers how the existing landscape might direct man's relationship to nature in the future. For BURIED TREASURE, the artist presents the mobile engawa as a place for visitors to sit and meditate on their place in the universe. On the entrance wall, travel notes discuss his experiences on the road. A bilingual catalogue featuring an interview with the artist by Mami Kataoka, senior curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Shinoda's visual diary and travelogue, and an essay by Gallery at REDCAT director and curator Eungie Joo will be available in mid-March.

Born in 1964, Taro Shinoda emerged as a practicing artist at the age of 30. He has participated in a number of major group exhibitions including Roppongi Crossing (2004) at the Mori Art Museum, Living Together is Easy (2004) at Art Tower Mito and the National Gallery Victoria, Melbourne; Time After Time: Asia and Our Moment at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Centre of Attraction: 8th Baltic Triennial of Iinternational Art, the 2001 Yokohama Triennial, and Under Construction: New Dimensions in Contemporary Asian Art in Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo. Shinoda lives and works in Tokyo. BURIED TREASURE: TARO SHINODA is the artist's first solo outside of Japan.

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the American Center Foundation, Eve Steele and Peter Gelles and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by Shiseido Co., Ltd. and The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, Discover Signs and R-23. The artist's Los Angeles residency is funded by the Asian Cultural Council.

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BURIED TREASURE: Taro Shinoda