Mariko Mori, Oneness

Mariko Mori, Vicky Hayward (Ed.)

Oneness

Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, Germany, 2007
Imitation leather in slipcase, 308 pages with 126 illustrations, 85 in color, 12 in duotone, 1 foldout, 21,4 x 27,3 cm, German / English
Texts by Takayo Iida & Noriko Umemiya
Graphic design by Simon Browning, Hester Fell, Tokio

• "The Most Beautiful German Books Prize," 2007
• "Best Book Design from all over the World Prize", 2008

One of the best-known Japanese artists of the international scene, Mariko Mori, born in 1967 in Tokyo, envisions fantastical worlds and beings in spectacular photographs and videos--frequently casting herself amid these scenarios as a Bjork-esque avatar in biomorphic and technological symbiosis. Mori studied fashion design in Tokyo, worked briefly as a model and later studied fine art in England, and this early education is visible in her elaborately produced photographs, videos and sculpture that are as reminiscent of Hollywood as they are of contemporary art. Her recent work involves exotic landscapes, computer-generated images and choreographed performances for which the artist designs her own costumes and plays the central characters.

Japanese artist Mariko Mori (*1967 in Tokyo) has maintained a consciousness for the unity of the material, spiritual, and technological world. Her latest work, Tom na H-iu, a four-and-a-half-meter-tall glass sculpture, also blends ancient rituals with twenty-first-century technology. The monolith was inspired by Celtic menhirs, the mythical point of transition for the soul into a new life. Computerized LED rays illuminate the work in various colors, a reference to the real-time appearance of neutrinos detected by the Super Kamiokande, the Japanese neutrino detector.

This extraordinary and substantial publication offers a retrospective of Mori's entire oeuvre, and is the first to present the complete Beginning of the End: Past, Present, Future, a photographic cycle produced over a period of 11 years, in which Mori presents herself as a time traveler in a plexiglass capsule at significant symbolic locations, from Giza to New York to Shanghai.

Exhibitions:

• Albion Gallery, London 9.10.-22.12.2006
• Groninger Museum, Groningen 29.4.-2.9.2007
• AroS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus 4.10.2007-27.1.2008