Golem

SAI presents “GOLEM,” an exhibition organized by an artist collective that reexamines, as art, the sculptural language cultivated within popular culture—games, animation, figure culture—running from Friday, August 14th to Sunday, August 30th. Curated by GOLEM’s representative Heishiro Ishino, the exhibition brings together a total of eight artists active in different fields: sculptors, concept designers, prototype sculptors, and 3DCG artists. GOLEM is at once a series of exhibitions, a community of artists, and a movement. Since its first cry at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in 2022, it has continued its practice through “GOLEM Ph1.5” and “GOLEM Ph2.” Many of the participating artists are sculptors who have honed their skills on the front lines of the game and film industries, or in the world of figure culture represented by Wonder Festival. Home video games, trading cards, tokusatsu, animation—the monstrous, uncanny images that have been repeatedly generated and circulated within such visual culture, settling as a kind of generational bodily memory, pass through these artists’ hands and rise up before our eyes as created beings that are neither craft, nor figures, nor merchandise, and yet cannot be fully described in the existing language of sculpture either—works of overwhelming precision and mass. The name GOLEM derives from a being of clay in Jewish folklore that comes to life when the word “אמת (truth)” is inscribed on its forehead. Erase the first letter, and it becomes “מת (death),” and it crumbles. A golem is unfinished—a provisional life that always carries within it the possibility of collapse. Crossing a diverse range of materials and techniques, whether premised on permanence or not, the artists’ forms are not a celebration of solidity or preservability, but of matter that clings to life even while bearing its own fragility; they are also a questioning of the vitality that dwells within lifeless existence. To treat unresponsive matter as another being that might someday respond, and to go on carving its details—this very gesture is the common thread running through GOLEM’s artists. This exhibition, “GOLEM,” marks a turning point for the collective: it takes stock of the achievements and challenges of its activities so far, and represents a fresh start after reconsidering its curatorial philosophy, the way its exhibitions are constructed, and how it communicates. Its purpose is not simply to connect sculptural expression to the context of contemporary art in itself. Building on the way “illustration” and “games” have become established as genres in their own right within the field of art, this exhibition explores new possibilities for expression that take three-dimensional form-making as their starting point. At a moment when the rapid advance of AI technology is calling the meaning of creation into question, this exhibition will be a place to confront the origins of creation head-on, armed with physicality, materiality, and thought. The exhibition catalogue, published during the run of the show, will include an exhibition review written expressly for this show by the artist Rintaro Fuse. This critical response to the GOLEM movement will be another work in its own right—one that only those who pick up the catalogue can read. These are created beings generated within a time unlike efficiency or optimization. Something not yet alive may someday give something back. Through the practice of sculptural form-making, GOLEM continues to ask that question. Please, be there to witness its arrival.