YOD Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition, "PLANET ANTIQUES", by Toshiyuki Shibakawa that will be held from 15th June to 31st July 2010.

Shibakawa is a sculptor who works with the theme of "our society viewed in 2000 years later". The concept of his works originally drives from the two excavations, the excavated Kusado Sengen medieval town in Japan and the ruins of Pompeii in Italy, The both cities have the similarity that they were in full flourish at that time, Kusado Sengen was 600 years ago and Pompeii was 2000 years ago, and were suddenly demolished and declined by natural disasters. Our society has been rapidly developed in several thousand years compared with the speed of Earth’s growth, but we might loose our civilization at anytime which could be easily destroyed by natural phenomena. He thinks that our brains will never overcome the power of nature and the repetition of the fall and the prosperity of mankind’s history has built our present time.

Shibakawa continues exhibiting his works in public galleries and museums to ask a lot of viewers what the present time is by guiding us to trip into 2000 years later with his fossilised present commodities. It was the first successful event for contemporary artists to have an exhibition at museums in Japan and to gather 6000 participants in his workshop at the Hiroshima Prefectural Museum of History in 2003. It helped to make public art museums in Japan to turn their notions and way of administration. Since then, he has accomplished to have large projects to show his dynamism of current time from the present to future in cooperate with regional history by involving local people and art museums, such as Sakura City Museum of Art, The Museum of Art, Kochi, Aomori Museum of Art and Towada Arts Center.

In this exhibition, "PLANET ANTIQUES", Shibakawa installs a collaboration of his fossilised sculptures and antiques in the gallery space. The area called “Oimatsu Street”, in which YOD Gallery is located, is famous for art and antique galleries that have been developed in the history. The collaboration with "Antiques" in the exhibition differs from his past exhibitions at museums in which he adopted site-specific elements of historical remains and ancient objects. Although "Antique" has lost its present state, we could clearly recognise its shape and function. Its appearance that contains both past and present implication could be still adopted in our daily use in contrast with ancient objects from several hundred or thousand years ago that have lost its original form. The new element, "Antique", as a process of current time would make his concept of time in the past, present and future more evolved in deeper. It will show us a different phase of time current that changes in meaning and form from the past to 2000 years later through "Antiques" and the identity of "Oimatsu Street" area.