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Contemporary art installation featuring abstract, elongated, blue forms wrapped in material, mounted on thin, black metal stands of varying heights, arranged across a shiny, reflective gallery floor under dim lighting.

The Garden of Forking Paths: Mira Gojak and Takehito Koganezawa

When

This exhibition has now ended.

Location

Buxton Contemporary Corner Southbank Boulevard & Dodds Street, Southbank. The University of Melbourne, Melbourne

The Garden of Forking Paths brought together the distinctive practices of Mira Gojak and Takehito Koganezawa, finding points of connection and divergence in the trajectories of these two highly accomplished artists. The project took its name from the title of modernist Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ intricate and magical short story from 1941. Part philosophy, part science fiction and part riddle, Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths is a richly multidimensional text that conjures up coexistent but dynamically shifting realms of time and space.

The exhibition similarly traced two very different timeframes, durations and approaches to making. Australian artist Mira Gojak presented new work alongside drawings, sculptures, installations and photographs spanning more than twenty years, while the practice of her Japanese counterpart Takehito Koganezawa was represented by performative video drawings and new improvisational works together with a sampling of earlier works on paper.

To varying degrees both artists lyrically registered the fluid instabilities of existence and consciousness – shifting gravities interspersed with moments of weightlessness, the flux and passage of time, and the very elemental processes of growth, entropy and decay.

Tracing the affinities, differences and overlapping and divergent impulses that link and separate Gojak’s and Koganezawa’s work, The Garden of Forking Paths sought to enter into the evocative, multiple parallel possibilities, realities and territories that they each poetically create.

This exhibition was curated by Melissa Keys, Curator of Buxton Contemporary, and Shihoko Iida, Chief Curator of the Aichi Triennale 2019.

Gallery

A minimalist gallery space features a large abstract black wire sculpture and a white wall with bold black text titled “The Garden of Forking Paths,” accompanied by an artist statement.
A contemporary art gallery with scattered abstract sculptures: pale purple organic shapes on thin stands and a cluster of yellow, grape-like forms on the floor near a central pillar. The walls are orange and gray, and the floor is polished concrete.
A modern art gallery with sculptural metal and wood structures on the left and center, and a series of six framed abstract blue and white prints displayed on the far white wall. The floor is polished concrete.

Exhibition Catalogue

A grey book with The Garden of Forking Paths in blue bold text

The Garden of Forking Paths: Mira Gojak & Takehito Koganezawa

Authors: Mira Gojak, Shihoko lida, Melissa Keys, Takehito Koganezawa.

The Garden of Forking Paths: Mira Gojak & Takehito Koganezawa
Buxton Contemporary, University of Melbourne
7 November 2018 – 17 February 2019

Available for purchase at Buxton Contemporary, with postal delivery available. For purchase enquiries contact Buxton Contemporary.

$15, student discount 50%

Read more

Access

Download wall labelsPDF (133 KB)

Supporters

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  1. Banner Image:

    Installation view, The Garden of Forking Paths, Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne, 7 November 2018 – 17 February 2019, photography Christian Capurro