Artists

Simon Fujiwara Born in 1982 in London, Great Britain | Lives and works in Berlin und Mexico City

Portrait

Simon Fujiwara

Simon Fujiwara

Simon Fujiwara uses his own biography as a source for his installations, performances and books, which he weaves into a web of cultural myths, concrete places and events, and the meaning and reality of homosexual desire.

Fujiwara’s stories draw upon fictional elements and real occurrences and locations, using them to rattle the ratios of fiction, taboos, and the sanctioned method of writing history. He speculates, fabricates new connections which he verifies with objects and documents, and then repeatedly betrays their believability through exaggeration. Fujiwara’s stories, developed around found objects rooted in a biographical perspective, search for blind spots and create stories that present history as a never-ending process. Innumerable possible combinations take the place of a generally accepted truth.

The work,The personal effects of Theo Grünberg(2010), for example, reconstructs the life of Theo Grünbergs, the 136-year-old who died in 2008. His estate that includes a library of nearly 1,000 volumes as well as lyrical diaries, phonograph records, newspaper clippings, and postcards came through a roundabout way into Fujiwara’s possession. Based on the objects and pictures, the artist reconstructs the life story of an unknown man that becomes a biography of the 20th century which is inextricably linked to the history of Germany.

Education

2006-2008 Städelschule Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Frankfurt/Main
2002-2005 Architektur (BA), Cambridge University, Great Britain

Awards

2010 Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel (Statements)

Solo exhibitions (selection)

2011 Tate St. Ives, St. Ives, Great Britain
2009 Impersonator, MAK Center at the Schindler House, Los Angeles, USA
Welcome to the Hotel Munber, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main
The Museum of Incest, Archive Kabinett, Berlin
2008 The Closet Gallery, Architecture Foundation, London, Great Britain
2007 Kein Trinkwasser, Stellwerk, Kassel

Group exhibitions (selection)

2010 Here and Now, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf
Bringing Up Knowledge, MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain
All the Memory in the World, GAM, Turin, Italy
Seven Little Mistakes, Museo Marino Marini, Florenz, Italy
20 Years, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, USA
Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain
Exhibition, Exhibition, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
Huckleberry Finn, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA
Disidentification, Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden
2009 The Collectors, Nordic Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venedig, Italy
Feminine Endings (mit Tim Davies); Scorpio’s Garden, Temporary Kunsthalle, Berlin
Berlin – Los Angeles: A Tale of Two (Other) Cities, Massimo de Carlo, Mailand, Italy
The Incest Museum; Office of Real Time Activity, Royal College of Art, London, Great Britain
Second Row (mit Tobias Rehberger), Oppenheimer, Frankfurt am Main
Zeigen, Temporary Kunsthalle, Berlin
Provenances, Umberto di Marino, Neapel, Italy
What Is Not But Could Be If (Part 1), Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt am Main
2008 Home is the Place You Left, Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Trondheim, Norway