Bruce YONEMOTO

Profile

Born in 1949OOOO(year). Graduated from UC Berkeley 1971 Otis Art Institute 1979 , Sokei Bijitsu GakkoOOOO(final educational background) in OOOO(year).
From 2008 to the present I have been actively producing work, exhibiting and participating in peer reviewed residencies in South America and Asia. In 2010 I was honored by the St. Louis Museum of Art, one the major encyclopedic museums in the United States, with a one person show. I was also selected by the Museum and Washington University in St. Louis for a three month internationally competitively selected residency. For this exhibition and residency, I completed a new body of work which I produced in Vietnam in 2009 with partial funding with a CORCL grant from UC Irvine. This new work; a video installation, Before I Close My Eyes, and a new series of digital photographs, Beyond South: Vietnam, was shown in New York City at the Alexander Gray Gallery.  During one of my two trips to Ho Chi Minh City in 2009, I was asked to create a survey retrospective exhibition at the Quynh Gallerie, a premier venue for contemporary art in Vietnam. In November 2011 my work will be featured in a retrospective exhibition at LAX ART: The Seminal Space for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles as part of The Getty Museum sponsored Pacific Standard Time Survey Exhibition. I have also been featured in four other solo exhibitions as well as twelve major Group Exhibitions. I have also been included in five exhibition catalogues, including two major books published in conjunction with the Getty Museum and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.  It is the residencies, however, which are currently inspiring my new art production. I have had a series of residencies at the Montalvo Art Center, in Saratoga, California where I have been developing my Peruvian opera, the Sacred Songs. The Sacred Songs will have a premier recital at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2011 My video installation, The End of the World at the Edge of the Earth (working title) will be introduced at the Los Angeles MAK center in 2011.  I have also collaborated on a published book chapter for the peer reviewed Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. I have also delivered public talks and developed workshops at the Goethe Institute in Hanoi, Vietnam, Hiroshima City University, Japan, The University of Arizona, The School of Visual Arts in Rio de Janeiro and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston among others.

Recent main activities are
2011 LAXART, Los Angeles, California  (Retrospective).
2010 St. Louis Museum of Art, Alexander Gray & Associates, New York
2009 Gallerie Quynh Contemporary Art. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam  "North South East West", Survey Retrospective, Bolksky Gallery, Otis Art Institute, "Simulations II"
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About works / performance

Kintsugi (金継ぎ) is the art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin infused with powdered gold. The "recycling" of once valued objects, now broken and destroyed represents an art practice of rebirth and renewal. At this moment of world economic depression I find the practice of Kintsugi to be one of optimism. Embracing the Remake (リメイク) is my project to create a series of photographs documenting these artworks of transformation as well as updating the practice of Kintsugi by "repairing" contemporary unique objects and broken mass-produced commodities.