Current Show    |     Future Shows    |     Past Shows    |     Box Sets Current Exhibitions: Arigato Gaijin Emerging Contemporary Artists From Japan Kim Beck Opening: Saturday, October 1, 7 - 10 Exhibitions Runs: October 1 ? 29, 2005 Shisei Hashimura Tomoaki Sato Satoshi Saegusa Akira Shikiya Daisuke Ueno   Works by Shisei Hashimura, Tomoaki Sato, Satoshi Saegusa, Akira Shikiya, and Daisuke Ueno Themes of communality, obsolescence and a fascination with the quotidian thread through Arigato Gaijin ('thank you, foreigners') ; an exhibition of painting, photography, sculpture and ceramic works by five young Japanese artists. Organized in co-operation with Kyubidou Gallery, Tokyo, Arigato Gaijin includes Daisuke Ueno's images of 'us' within elusive community, in which small houses cluster into bigger but unbalanced and incomplete ship-like shapes. Addressing a more intimate interdependency, Satoshi Saegusa's bifurcated ceramics butt visually distinct forms to consider 'what is between you and me'. Tomoaki Sato's installations and photographs take clothing choices as their starting point to explore individuality and sameness within the group. The paintings of Shisei Hashimura's whirlpool mass media information with images and dreams from the artist's inner world to approach the everyday as a site of apprehension. While Akira Shikiya's intricate sculptural installations detach everyday objects from their functionality in order to unlock lyricism from the mundane - in this case from the almost-obsolete technologies of analog recording. North Gallery Kim Beck: Lot  Drawing with images of architecture and landscape, Pittsburgh-based artist Kim Beck makes installations that survey peripheral spaces. Overlooked weeds and storage sheds are layered in this mixed media project exhibited in Raid Project's North Gallery. Combining vinyl multiples, wall drawing and simple animation, Lot brings the banal and the everyday into focus. Recently named the 2006 Emerging Artist of the Year in Pittsburgh, Beck has exhibited at venues that include Smack Mellon and Plane Space in New York City; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and the Denver Art Museum. She has received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and grants from, among others, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the NYSCA and has participated in numerous residencies, including at Cit? Internationale des Arts, Paris; the Vermont Studio Center; the Northern Territory Museum, Darwin, Australia; and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Beck currently teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.