Frieda Toranzo Jaeger – Against Meaninglessness

Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Frieda Toranzo Jaeger “Against Meaninglessness”, marking her first solo show with the gallery. While drawing on her artistic themes of decolonial thinking, queer freedom, and connection to nature, as well as her characteristic forms of sculptural, hinged, multipaneled canvases and embroidery, the artist also addresses the issues arising from the current social climate, such as the socio-political crises and violent extremism.

Toranzo Jaeger mentions that the starting point for constructing the framework for the show was to analyze the work of Keiji Nishitani, a Japanese philosopher, especially his study on Nihilism. The artist’s main interest has been the rise of fascism, populism, wars and genocide in the West and even worldwide, attributing these issues to a lack of agency, which is the kind that nowadays young people experience. The feeling that their actions can make no difference causes a sense of senselessness, which leads to nihilism, eventually opening the door to fascism. While Western philosophy suggests that nihilism can be overcome through nihilism itself, Toranzo Jaeger believes that there is room for discussion. In her works, she focuses on Nishitani’s proposition of unifying nihilism and Zen Buddhism. In nihilism, the self is the problem, and because the self is meaningless, everything becomes meaningless. Otherwise, in Buddhism, this meaninglessness or “emptiness” is the basis on which everything arises; without this emptiness, nothing could emerge. The artist describes the idea that nothingness is the source of meaning as a profoundly beautiful proposal for our times, because our existence starts from nothing, just as an empty canvas allows for the creation of any painting.

This exhibition consists of four main topics: the Gardens, Space, Hearts, and Cars. The Gardens represent a proposition of the future, which emerges from nothingness, and a place where we find joy and fulfillment in the chaos that is to come. For the Space, the artist questions: Where do we deposit the more futuristic future? In Out of Space, all the technocrats who are horny for the apocalypse have already bailed on our planet and are thinking of rebuilding society, but how are they imagine it? And why should we surrender to their ideas without building our own first? The Heart is her symbolic work to decodify the symbol itself. It has intertwined desire and love in one indivisible package, but the artist claims that we have to approach this more critically, asking how we cultivate desire and why our needs and desires cannot be separated. No matter how much we love, how many hearts we give online, or how much we consume, the internal void keeps expanding. The Cars, as a continuation of Toranzo Jaeger’s long-standing practice, is a psychological space of late-stage capitalism where ontological power structures like gender and identity are displayed.

Toranzo Jaeger opens new horizons towards the creation of our future, challenging the traditional semiology of Western art, and encourages us to overcome the problems of modern society.

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger was born in 1988, lives and works in Mexico City. She received a BA in Fine Art at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, and an MFA at the same institution.

Gallery hours Wed-Sun 11 – 7 pm
closed on Monday, Tuesday and National Holidays

Exhibition Duration 27.09. – 10.11.2024

www.takaishiigallery.com

Location:
Taka Ishii Gallery Maebashi
Maebashi Galleria 1F, 5-9-1 Chiyoda-machi
371-0022 Maebashi-shi, Gunma
Japan