“VIRTUAL FLUXUS TWO” / SHOZO  SHIMAMOTO 1928-2013
06 July 2015
VIRTUAL ART GALLERY SPACE OPHEN 2.0
Via S. Calenda, 105 / D - Salerno

"VIRTUAL FLUXUS TWO"
SHOZO SHIMAMOTO
1928 - 2013

International project dedicated to Shozo Shimamoto
by Giovanni Bonanno (Part Two)
Since July 16, 2015 al 29 August 2015
Opening: Thursday, July 16, 2015, 18:00
Ophen Virtual Art Gallery, Via S. Calenda, 105 / D - Salerno Tel / Fax 089 5648159
e-mail: bongiani@alice.it
Web Gallery: http://www.collezionebongianiartmuseum.it
Open all day every day from 00.00 to 24.00

According to independent event designed to coincide with the 56th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia

Inaugurated Thursday, July 16, 2015, at 18.00, the international exhibition "Add & Return" by Giovanni Bonanno entitled: "FLUXUS TWO VIRTUAL" that Space Ophen Virtual Art Gallery of Salerno dedicated to the Japanese artist Shozo Shimamoto second event as contemporary and independent designed to coincide with the 56th International Biennial of Art in Venice 2015. For this particular occasion, the gallery intends to devote attention to two Japanese artists like Shozo Shimamoto and Ryosuke Cohen, summarizing very well the concept of The World's Futures / "Inside and outside the body," (in and out of the body). Between May 31 and August 29, 2015 will be presented at the Space Ophen Virtual Art Gallery 2.0 of Salerno, the works of 97 artists in two exhibitions with a respective series of selected works of Shozo Shimamoto, (24 works) on the sidelines of the project Mail Art "Head" project materialized profitably between the years 80 and 90. In this "second part" of the International exhibition are 50 works by as many other important international authors who participated in the international project dedicated to him.

Featured artists:
Shozo Shimamoto, Adriano Bonari, Ernesto Terlizzi, Gian Paolo Roffi, G. Franco Brambati, Michel Della Vedova, Ruud Janssen, Nicholas D'Alessandro, Rosanna Veronesi, Antonio Amato, Fernando Andolcetti, Fausto Paci, Claudio Romeo, Giancarlo Pucci, Daniel Daligand , Fulgor C. Silvi, Juliana Hellmundt, Andrea Bonanno, Miguel Jimenez, Bruno Sayão, Borderline Grafix, Dmitry Babenko, Masayuki Koorida, David Dellafiora, Massimo Medola, Luca Jacob, Angela Caporaso, Maurizio Follin, Linda Peeled, Daniel de Cradle, Monica Michelotti, Michal Bycko, Arturo Phallic, Ars & Design, Antonio Conte, Claudio Kinship, Mike Dyar - Eat Art, Lorenzo Lome Menguzzato, Alfonso Caccavale, Anabela G. & Bruno C, Maria Jose Silva, Domenico Severino, Maurizia Carantani, Giovanni Bonanno, Lucia Spagnuolo, Walter Plumes, Roberto Scala, Carlo Iacomucci, Manuel Ruiz Ruiz, Xerxes Luigetti.


Shozo Shimamoto: shaved head goes around the world
Shozo Shimamoto writes: "With my head shaved, in 1987 I was in America and Canada, and then I traveled to Europe in 1990 from London to Leningrad. In 1993 he went to Italy and Finland. During my steps have been welcomed by many artists of mail art who wrote their messages on my head, or you have projected slides or film. In fact all were ready waiting for me with a few ideas in mind. In 1988, a student of mine brought me a copy of the magazine he had found in the pocket of the seat of the plane of JAL in a Tokyo-Paris flight. It was a sort of guide of Japan where he presented in English the beauty of the Buddhist temples, the information on the dishes and whatnot. But among other things, the page that was cinema, was also reported as a curiosity a chance to see a film projected on my head, complete with a hand drawn illustration. Without knowing it, my head shaved was flying around the world. In 1987 he sent to the artists of mail art a sheet printed with the silhouette of my head from behind and view a message in which I invited artists to make their intervention. I received about 500 responses. The fact that the answers were so many is due to the system of the network characteristic of mail art, where it is not uncommon for artists to copy and reinterpret the original contents and then print it again by sending it to other artists and so on. [...] One day I received a mail art very unique. He came from France, and the author was Pascal Lenoir, even if the original sheet had left by the Dutch Cor Reyn who had in turn photocopied my head and put the message of invitation to draw into something. Well Lenoir inside my head photocopied ten other shrunken silhouette of the same, proposing an invitation to draw us into something, and sent it to me. Seeing her, I could not help laughing. The piece of mail art that I had sent had multiplied, the number of heads was increased, and via different routes was delivered to me with the words: Why not join too? In art there are no postal copyrights, indeed, the opposite spirit that characterizes it is to invite others to use without limits the various contents. So it is possible that without my knowledge my piece is modified, enriched with new ideas, and return to my address. The American Cracker Jack Kid even sends the three-dimensional models of my head. "


BIOGRAPHY
Shozo Shimamoto (Osaka 22 January 1928 to 25 January 2013) was an important contemporary artist Japanese. In the first 50 years he has been with Jiro Yoshihara the founder of the Movement for the Concrete Art Gutai. Gutai is the artistic movement that has best represented the need to create a cultural bridge, a place of synthesis between two artistic models. His works are based on the fact to free art from the conventions of traditional ,. anticipating phenomena such as Fluxus and Conceptual Art, establishing fruitful relations with the Fluxus movement, and Spatialism Italian Lucio Fontana. In the manifesto of the artistic movement we talk about banning the brush. After the dissolution of the Gutai movement, Shozo Shimamoto discovered mail art that uses the extraordinary possibilities for active and collective participation. In the nineties it recreates the Bottle Art. Shozo Shimamoto did performances around the world with his vision of peace. In '1996 Ben Porter, the nuclear physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project, the proposed for the Nobel Prize for Peace. Shozo Shimamoto was also one of the main pioneers of Mail Art. In 1975-1976, it adheres to the initiatives of the Union of Artists (Artists' Union Group), which became one of the highest representatives of the Mail Art, developing a new and highly personal conception man-artist as a product of social work and community that is reflected in a specific project: whenever Shozo Shimamoto meets an artist or a politician important invited him to intervene with slogans, drawings and objects on his shaved head, preserving the photographic documentation of the action. In addition, since 1986, he will continue unceasingly to use his head shaved as a means for its activities of mail art by participating in the Peace Run through Europe continuing to lead and spread through his performances, messages of peace. In 1987, invited by the Museum of Dallas staged a performance on the centenary of the birth of Marcel Duchamp: peace messages and film clips are projected on his shaved head. The New York Times critic Roberta Smith has described it as one of the most daring experimenters and independent of the postwar art scene in the fifties. His works are in the collections of museums such as the Tate Gallery and the Tate Modern (London and Liverpool) and the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe, Japan and in major collections and private collections.

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