By introducing aural elements to a museum or gallery, an environment which has traditionally been dominated by visual principles, Fujimoto Yukio (born in 1950) has created works of art that encourage the viewer to reexamine the rather obvious idea that there are close links between the human sensory organs that enable us to see, hear, feel, and even taste. There are countless artists who are referred to as "sound artists." But no one except Fujimoto Yukio has taken the relationship between seeing and hearing, and logically applied it to art.
For a period of ten years, Fujimoto planned and staged the "audio picnic at the museum" exhibition (at the Otani Memorial Art Museum, Nishinomiya City). By opening the museum for a single day each year, with the active participation of the viewers, Fujimoto used his works, devised through a variety of means, to turn every part of the facility, including not only the display rooms but also the garden, lobby, corridors, tea room, curators' office, storage area, and basement into an exhibition space.
The "Fujimoto Yukio: plus/minus" exhibition marks an important departure from Fujimoto's past efforts to dramatically transform ordinary spaces. Instead, by showing a large-scale new work that makes use of music and sound reproduction equipment, and an inorganic, modern type of exhibition space, we have attempted to present another side of Fujimoto. In Fujimoto's new sound-field spaces, contradictory concepts such as "music" and "noise," "unification" and "fragmentation," and "integration" and "differentiation" are brought to life, inviting the viewer on a journey to previously unknown worlds.