Koki Tanaka

Born in 1975, Koki Tanaka lives and works in Kyoto, Japan. In his diverse art practice spanning video, photography, site-specific installations, and interventional projects, Tanaka visualizes and reveals the multiple contexts latent in the most simple of everyday acts. In his early object-oriented works, Tanaka experiments with ordinary objects to explore ways to offer a possible escape from our everyday routine.

In his later works, Tanaka asks the participants to collectively navigate tasks that are out of the ordinary and documented behaviors that were unconsciously exhibited by people confronting unusual situations: For instance, in one of his works featuring a piece of pottery made by five potters and a piano played by five pianists simultaneously, he seeks to reveal group dynamics in a micro-society and temporal community.

Following the disaster on 11 March 2011 in Japan, Koki Tanaka has employed a variety of methods to produce works on the relationality that arises between human beings, there are what Tanaka calls “collective acts”: experiments of various sorts which still lack a fixed destination.

He has exhibited his work widely in places such as: The Migros Museum, Zurich; the Kunsthaus, Graz; the Kunsthaus, Zurich; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; VanAbbe Museum, Eindhoven; the ICA, London; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Skulptur Projekte, Münster 2017; 57th Venice Biennale 2017; the Liverpool Biennial 2016; the 55th Venice Biennale 2013; the Yokohama Triennial 2011; the Gwangju Biennial 2008; and the Taipei Biennial 2006.

He received a special mention as the national participation at the 55th Venice Biennale 2013, and the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year 2015 award.