Casey Kaplan

Haris Epaminonda
VOL. XVII
March 24 - April 23
Opening Thursday, March 24, 6 - 8PM

Mr. Morimoto wears two watches, one on each hand. Neither offers the correct time. He left Japan when he retired, about 16 years ago, to move to Paris and become a painter. One of his works depicts a cat flying in midair above a river, holding a guitar. He points to it and says ‘moi, chat’. Maelle told me how she met him on the street en route to a gallery opening. He didn’t speak French or English and wore a black suit and hat with a white plastic rose in the jacket’s upper pocket. Unable to exchange a word with him, she gave him her card. She said “demain, à 4 heures ici?” After weeks of negotiations, he accepted the invitation. And so, for 2 months and over the course of my exhibition at Le Plateau in Paris (2015), three times a week for three hours, he would show up based on a timetable according to a graph depicting a fictional mountain.

Mr. Morimoto would rest the majority of the time. He would drink his tea, read his book, and occasionally gather the granules of sand left scattered around from the time before. Then, he would sit on a low stool and begin his usual task - that of polishing a large dark grey rock. Its surface has changed over time, adapting a patina of white chalk-like appearance on the surface that exposes traces of a circling pressure and the dripping of water down its spine.

You can find Mr. Morimoto still wandering the streets of Paris in his black suit and hat. He holds tied to his belt a diary, a book that he made out of scattered papers he gathered here and there compiling the names of all the people he encounters on his daily route, each written in Japanese. With it, a folded, used map of the world. Mr. Morimoto is not a fictional character. His story continues in the margins, watching the world pass by as we return his gaze. With this, he allows himself to drift above the river and up into the sky, holding his guitar and playing songs that have yet to be written…

Haris Epaminonda (b. 1980, Nicosia, Cyprus) lives and works in Berlin. VOL. XVII marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with Casey Kaplan since joining the gallery in 2015, and her first in New York following Projects 96: Haris Epaminonda, a solo presentation held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2011-2012.

In recent years, Epaminonda has presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Le Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris (2015); Villa du Parc, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Annemasse, France (2015); TENT, Rotterdam (2015); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2014); Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia (2013); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2013); Kunsthaus Zürich (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2011); Tate Modern, London (2010); and Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2009). Recent group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2015); Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2015); Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Genève (2015); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2014); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2013); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (2013); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2013); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2013); Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2013); Witte de With | Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2012); dOCUMENTA, Kassel (2012); The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2010) and New Museum, New York (2009). In 2007, Epaminonda co-represented Cyprus at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Forthcoming, the artist is participating in a group exhibition at Fondazione Prada, Milan (2016) and is slated for a solo presentation at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC), Seville, Spain in April of 2016.