Notice - Forest: Madison Avenue Notice – Forest: Madison Avenue

Born in Okinawa, TERUYA Yuken (1973- ) currently lives and works in New York. For him, the year 1995 holds memories of his first solo exhibition and other actions of his early career. Through slight interventions in the world around him, Teruya creates works that combine excellence of form with a critical view of the mechanisms of society. One of his foremost series is a group of works entitled Notice - Forest. Looking inside a world famous hamburger shop’s paper bag, we discover a straight tree bearing branches lush with leaves. It is, he says, modeled on an actual tree he encountered in the area where he lives. Inspired by a personal experience, he employs the simple idea that paper was once a tree and leads the viewer’s awareness to global capitalist society and major problems concerning our cities and environment. Teruya’s works point to a method using conversion of viewpoint to enable entirely different perspectives on the world.