Artist Duo Fitch and Trecartin Make Their Tokyo Debut in ‘It Waves Back'

Fondazione Prada will unveil a new solo exhibition by the Ohio-based artist duo Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. Housed at its Prada Aoyama location in Tokyo, It Waves Back comprises of new sculptures and video installations that critique consumerism and the hyper-commodification of self in the digital age.

The exhibition marks the first time Fitch and Trecartin have shown in Japan, as they populate the Herzog & de Meuron-designed space with a large-scale installation, two movies and a series of assemblage sculptures. Central to the show are two films that revisit Whether Line (2017), the first commission Fitch and Trecartin worked on with Prada. Both are on view in a wooden structure and smaller darkened space that conflates conflicting aesthetic styles, such as exposed wooden beams with an exaggerated facade that appears more akin to the geometric graphics found in a late ’90s, early ’00s video game, than any actual home or building.

“The resulting architectural gesture,” writes Prada Aoyama, “embodies contrasting notions of boundaries: inside and outside, viewer and participant, leisure and work. The two screens on which the movies are projected are placed on opposite sides of the same wall, providing multiple vantage points whereby visitors are both observing and being observed.”

From the freestanding sculptures to characters in their films, the latter of which is frequently played by the artists and their collaborators, Fitch and Trecartin interrogate how technology is continually transforming human perception of self and other, undermined by an increasing and unpredictable reliance on the digital forces that bind society.

It Waves Back will open on October 24.

Prada Aoyama
5-2-6 Aoyama,
Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
107-0062