Koki TanakaPrecarious Practice: Artist of The Year 2015

The Deutsche Bank honors the Japanese Koki Tanaka as Artist of the Year 2015. Tanaka follows Wangechi Mutu (Kenya), Yto Barrada (France/Morocco), Roman Ondak (Slovakia), Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), and Victor Man (Romania) as the sixth international artist to be presented with this award. Koki Tanaka is one of the most original artists of his generation to emerge on the global art scene in the last decade. A shrewd observer of the most ‘indifferent’ matters of the everyday, he always manages to magically transform them into fantastic events with a sense of humor, offering open but pungent implications that reveal the uncanniness of existence, explains Chinese curator Hou Hanru. Tanaka (*1975 in Tochigi, Japan) became known through installations and performances in which he implements everyday objects and material found in situ. A major share of his work consists of participatory projects that incorporate actors and exhibition viewers. Tanaka represented Japan at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, where his unsettlingly simple experiments proved that collaborations can pose a huge challenge.