MaMA 

Room for a fresh vision in curatorial practice, that is what is on offer through MAMA’s Mr Miyagi Curator Programme. A project that gives young artists and curators the chance to learn through practice. An international panel of curators guided the six participants, helping them to create an exhibition of works by graduates of 2005. They present their selection in the thematic exhibition, Spacequake.

Although the media is dominated by news items on terror threats, war and natural disasters, The graduates hardly refer to these events. The artists in Spacequake share a positive approach to the world, driven by personal fascinations, almost as if the artists had arrived in another dimension. Like Alice in Wonderland, armed with curiosity and attentiveness, they explore the concept of space from a personal point of view. But what do these spaces look like?

Spacequake highlights three aspects of space:
Boyspace, where boys chase and cherish dreams. They are in charge, have total control, even if it’s only over their toys. They imagine themselves as cowboys, pilots and other powerful figures.
Constructed Nature,nature is a source of inspiration in the creation of a new natural world, ruled by an entirely different set of laws.
Individual Territory, the borders are the starting point; where individual territory is questioned and the outside world is ‘taken in’.

These themes form a three-dimensional whole within the leitmotif of exploring space. There is, for example, a mural, specially created for Spacequake, which shows boys’ fantasies becoming reality. You can wander through a forest of felt or lose yourself in a room where only hearing is reliable. You may be spied upon or challenged to retain the boundaries of individual territory.

The works clash, search, fuse, repel, stretch out and implode again. A force 10 Spacequake on the Richter scale.