Following the exhibition “Spektrum” in Brussels in 2024, Reiko Setsuda invited Joël Riff to imagine a collaborative project for Le Forum in Tokyo. The resulting project has been devised to resonate with the initial proposition, an intention underscored by its double title, ‘Spektrum Spektrum’. This ‘extended curatorship’ offers a first glimpse of the transversal curatorial dynamic that Reiko Setsuda will pursue in her programming at Le Forum.
The title of this joint exhibition opens onto a broad spectrum of possible meanings - evoking ghostly apparitions, physical phenomena, and a collection of elements of the same nature. Through the repetition, the title takes up the interplay of reflections that emerge between the works brought together by the two curators.
The paintings of Emmanuelle Castellan (b. 1976 in France) are filled with reconstructed spaces, superimpositions and silhouettes with evanescent contours. Alongside these works, the asymmetrical ceramics of Johannes Nagel (b. in 1979 in Germany) and the enigmatic paintings of Walter Sennen (b. in 1946 in Belgium) add layers of mystery and complexity to this deliberately ambivalent exhibition. At Le Forum, these three artists, who were part of the original exhibition at La Verrière, enter into dialogue with three Japanese artists. Structuring the space, the frameworks of Michiko Tsuda (b. 1980) play with illusion, perspective and the viewer's perception. The humoursly captured spectral forms of the photographs by Motoyuki Daifu (b. 1985) and the biomorphic sculptures imagined by Kentaro Kawabata (b. 1976) further contribute to the multiple meanings and nuances circulating in this group exhibition.
Finally, two paintings by Marie Laurencin (1883-1956), one loaned by a Tokyo gallery, the other from a collection in Paris, offer a counterpoint that occupies an ambiguous space between reality and fiction. The motifs and colours of these exceptional, phantomatic canvases from another era add an additional echo to the other works that make up “Spektrum Spektrum” at Le Forum.
