VENUES

MEM (Multiply Encoded Messages) was founded by Katsuya Ishida in 1997 as a private gallery in Shitennoji, Osaka, and moved to Esaka in the same year. In 2003, MEM opened to the public as a contemporary art gallery in Kitahama, Osaka. The gallery was located on the fourth floor of the Arai Building, a registered tangible cultural property built in 1922. It hosted a series of three solo shows commemorating its opening, featuring three artists: “Barco negro na mesa,” which introduced the early work of Yasumasa Morimura; Tomoaki Ishihara’s “SCOTOMA,” which featured his sculpture of an evacuated sphere; and “HIMALAYA,” which exhibited Chie Matsui’s video installation shot in the Arai Building.

MEM’s early exhibitions highlighted the works of well-established Kansai-region artists like Yoshio Kitayama, Kimiyo Mishima, and Yasue Kodama, as well as newcomers like Noriko Yamaguchi and Maki Toshima. In 2010, MEM once again changed its home to the art complex NADiff A/P/A/R/T in Ebisu, Tokyo, where it continues to operate today. Upon relocation, the gallery added emerging artists such as Ayano Sudo and Natsuko Tanihara to its program. In addition, the gallery has enriched its focus on photography and introduced works by Ken Kitano, Katsumi Omori, Keizo Motoda, Charles Fréger, Antoine d’Agata, and other artists who represent contemporary photographic art in Japan and overseas.

The gallery also specializes in the photographic avant-garde movement in Osaka, which spans several decades and began in the 1930s.

MEM will present an exhibition by Chiyuki Sakagami, who creates abstract drawings, oil paintings, and sculptures that evoke images of primitive life forms and bacteria. Her most representative works employ mediums such as watercolor, pencil, ink, crystal, and lapis lazuli pigment on paper to create a predominantly blue canvas surfaces reinforced with multiple layers of images.

Sakagami’s work has been featured in museum exhibitions both in Japan and abroad, including “Parallel Visions” (Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, 1993), “Art spirite Mediumnique Visionnaire” (Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris, 1999), “Emotional Drawing” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2008), and “Collection Bruno Decharme – collection abcd” (La maison rouge, Paris, 2014). Her work can be found in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Art, Osaka; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne; and abcd, Paris, among others. The full scope of her work, spanning watercolor, oil painting, and sculpture, was showcased at the Yokohama Triennale in 2014.