Simon Fujiwara: Hope House
October 24 - March 13,2021
A solo exhibition featuring work by Simon Fujiwara. To register for the December 12 artist talk with Simon Fujiwara, go here. To register for the discussion on March 12, 2021, go here. From the Blaffer: "British-Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara is lauded internationally as a button-pushing 21st century impresario who works in an entrepreneurial style across multiple disciplines, subjects and styles. He often investigates themes of popular interest and desire such as tourist attractions, famous icons, celebrities, mass media and the popular employment of the museum. In this pan-historical, transformative exhibition, Fujiwara will present the culmination of four years of research, production, and thinking around the phenomenon of Anne Frank. Peering into the popular mythology that has been constructed around a humble girl whose secrecy underpinned her story, he examines what Frank’s legacy and formation as a celebrity and cultural icon reveals to us about contemporary society. The exhibition condenses his major work Hope House, which involved a full-scale reconstruction of the Anne Frank House across multiple floors of an Austrian museum, with Likeness, an uncanny life-size wax figure of Frank mediated by mechanized camera arms and 4K screens. Hope House also incorporates new archival imagery, works, models, and ephemera relating to the creation of the works. The show will incorporate the architecture of Blaffer Art Museum as part of the experience, where Fujiwara choreographs an immersive experience that brings the viewer into the world behind these works. In this sense it is both an exhibition and a “making of” story, culminating in a passage behind the secret bookshelf where we meet a hallucinatory avatar of Anne."
Artist talk: December 12, 2020 | 12-1 pm
With Simon Fujiwara via Zoom. For registration, see event description.
Conversation: March 12, 2021 | 12-1 pm
Simon Fujiwara, Alexandra Zapruder, and Mary Lee Webeck, see event description for registration
Blaffer Art Museum
120 University of Houston Fine Arts Building
Houston, TX 77204-4018
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