eitoeiko is pleased to announce a solo exhibition 'Primal Scene - KAFOU' by Ken Ikeda. Ikeda lives and works in London and this solo show becomes the first time in 12 years for him in Japan. 'Primal Scene - KAFOU' is curated by Takayo Iida, an independent curator. At the exhibition, Ikeda juxtaposes the sounds and visual images inspired by a series of diaries titled 'Dyspepsia House Days' written by Japanese author, playwright, essayist and diarist Kafu Nagai (1879-1959). Ikeda also shows collaboration with photographer Shin Suzuki. Nagai was suffered by the Kanto Daishinsai Earthquake(1923), and lived through the outbreak and the defeated of the Pacific War. How does he look on today?

Throwing light on the artist's own alienation
Takayo Iida

Ken Ikeda's music is not a device for measuring distance that has flux and linear continuity. His sounds maintain their autonomy in the temporal continuum, never establishing a hierarchy. The atomized sounds agglomerate, albeit only barely, through interpenetration with their neighbors. If anything the music is reminiscent of the wanderings of Japanese author and diarist Kafu Nagai, whose writings represented the spirit and culture of everyday Edo.
"A little after ten at night, I go out. I love the atmosphere of the area at night during the rainy period. Especially on nights when it isn't raining particularly hard, there's not much wind, and you can see the moon from time to time as the clouds pass and the rain pauses. On nights like this it's good to walk around without an umbrella, absorbed in my thoughts."(Diary entry for June 27, 1937, published in Dyspepsia House Days). Merging himself into the urban scenery, and strolling around the backstreets, Kafu was a discoverer of scenery. Somewhere, Kafu has commonalities with Ken Ikeda, who, making his performance into unique, unrepeatable events, is a discoverer of sounds. At the exhibition, there is another discoverer. Shin Suzuki is an accompanist for Ikeda. Suzuki's photographs established the exhibition. Kafu noticed that "After an earthquake, Ginza became bustling. Old Edo town was destroyed. Edokko (Edoite) disappeared." After the disaster, Ginza was affected by the American culture of the rationalism, and the amusement area of Tokyo moved from Asakusa to Ginza. An occurrence was happened at 2:46PM on March 11, 2011, at the birthplace of Shin Suzuki, was still deeply inside of his memory. He continues to take a record with a camera like a diary. The photographs he shows at the exhibition were taken by the days after months of the disaster. He vanished himself in the scenery. He keeps on shooting the images, with hope to find out a rebirth in everyday life. Every moment days have both of a life and a death. That is the reason I decided the theme of the exhibition 'Dyspepsia House Days'. Kafu Nagai, Ken Ikeda and Shin Suzuki's each life, they provide glimpse of a world completely unrelated to dialectical subjects.

Ken Ikeda
Ken Ikeda is an artist, composer and performer born in Tokyo, 1964. Currently a resident in London. After studied at Berklee College of Music, he participated in a lot of exhibitions such as Desert of Desire, SPIRAL, Tokyo, 1994, David Lynch's DREAMS, Parco Gallery, Tokyo, 1998 as a music composer, PICTURES, SCAI, Tokyo, 1999, Sonc Boom: The Art of Sound, Hayward Gallery, London, 2000, BEHIND THE SCENES, SCAI, 2001, Screen Memories, Mito Art Center, Ibaraki, 2002, Unspecialization, SCAI, 2004, Roppongi Crossing, Mori Art Museum, 2004. He composed for the artworks and exhibitions by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mariko Mori, Satoshi Aoyama, Tadanori Yokoo, David Lynch and others. He performed with John Russel, Eddie Prevost, David Toop, Paul G. Smith and others in London with primitive acoustic sounds by his original instruments and pure sine waves by DX7.
Ikeda released his first album "Tzuki" from Touch, UK, 2000. And then he released "Merge", Touch, 2003, "The Mist of Rainbow", SPEKK, 2007, "Kosame", SPEKK, 2010. In 2016, the newest full album "Primal Scene" will be released from SAD.

Shin Suzuki
Shin Suzuki was born in 1980, Fukushima. After received his BA Photography from Tokyo Polytechnic University, Suzuki works with a lot of commercial photographs and videos as well as his self projects. In 2008 he published his photo book "Shashin" from BOOK PEAK. He opens to public over 100,000 images of his archives at his website, holds over 30 workshops in a year, gives lectures in schools and universities, and opens his portrait studio. Over 6,000 models have been taken at his studio.

Ken Ikeda
Primal Scene - KAFOU
August 19 - September 3, 2016
Opening Reception: August 19, 7PM-9PM
Live Performance: August 27, OPEN 4PM/ START 4.30PM Fee 2,000JPY
guest: Tetuzi Akiyama, Chihei Hatakeyama, Takahiro Kawaguchi

Information Provided by: eitoeiko

Period: August 19,2016 (Fri)　〜 September 3,2016 (Sat)
Hours: 12PM-7PM
Closed: Sunday, Monday and National Holidays
Venue: eitoeiko