Commuter: Tetsuya Yamada

Tetsuya Yamada’s multimedia installation Commuter examines the lines between public and private spaces. Inspired by daily train rides in his native Tokyo, Yamada captures layers of bustling public transportation—trains, tracks, landscapes, and stations. His installation consists of a large, rotating wheel painted with two rows of unaligned black and white stripes that create the illusion of movement at different speeds. Two cameras capture and project the turning wheel, recreating the feeling of watching the urban landscape pass by from the window of a speeding train. In doing so, Yamada investigates the often-symbiotic relationship of humans to machines, celebrating the mechanical rhythms that produce daily routines.

Download the exhibition brochure of Tetsuya Yamada’s Commuter (pdf)

Scrap: Michael Kareken

In Scrap, Michael Kareken’s newest suite of oil paintings memorialize democratic piles of recyclable glass and metal, each performing as both a portrait and a landscape. Originally intrigued by the Rock-Tenn recycling plant as seen from his studio window, Kareken began painting piles of paper, glass, and steel, documenting their endless shifts as they mysteriously work their way in and out of the facility. Kareken portrays the drama and stark beauty of a new American scene. These refuse heaps are lovingly rendered, monochromatic studies of twisted metal or large, scrap-carrying magnets whose painted heft dissolves in a mass of swinging energy at the canvas edges.

Download the exhibition brochure of Michael Kareken’s Scrap (pdf)

Generous support for MAEP is provided by The McKnight Foundation and Jerome Foundation.