MISAKO & ROSEN is pleased to announce “Saiyonara Kaidan” (Farewell Stairs). The exhibition consists of photographs by Takashi Yasumura, Mie Morimoto, Motoyuki Daifu and Ayako Mogi.
MISAKO & ROSEN is presently located within a temporary gallery space. The gallery will move back to their original address 3-27-6 Kita-Otsuka, Toshima-Ku in the Summer of 2017 but the move will be into an entirely new building designed by architect Akihisa Hiarata.
“Saiyonara Kaidan” is an homage to the concrete stairs which featured prominently in the original gallery space. These stairs did not just function in leading visitors into the exhibition space;but, rather, sometimes served as an office for meetings, sometimes as a reading room, other times as seating for viewing performative or film-based works; in general, the stairs functioned as an open social space. Because of their prominence within the space, the stairs also helped determine the nature of each installation.
For the exhibition,we’ve asked for represented photographers to document the stairs and our former gallery space pre, during and post demolition to the gallery’s move into a temporary space from their individual perspective. “Sayonara Kaidan” is our most clearly emotional group exhibition to date; this due to our genuine love of the stairs in our past gallery space and the necessity of our saying goodbye.

＜Related information＞
Motoyuki Daifu “Still Life” Published by Newfave
Offset Print　Hardcover　64 pages
Design : Goshi Uhira　Printing & Binding : Shumpousha.,Co.Ltd.
Edition of 500　2016
http://newfavebooks.com/still-life-motoyuki-daifu.html

Ayako Mogi and Werner Penzel (direction, script, cinematography)
“While we kiss the sky” released early summer of 2016 and on view at Image Forum and in wide release,
http://silentvoice.jp/whilewekissthesky/

＜ARTIST COMMENT＞
There was one problem with those stairs. Misako always wore a skirt but she liked to sit on the stairs so I was afraid to look and see her underwear! How many times did I tell her about this!! But Misako is now a mother, so the time has come to say Good bye “Misako’s underpants glance moment!”, then “good bye Kaidan”.
─ Yui Yaegashi

The stairs would sometimes create an anxious feeling during an opening. There would be me and one or two other people at the bottom of the stairs talking, while most everyone else either sitting on the stairs or by the entrance, in the office, looking down at us, probably judging.
─ Trevor Shimizu

Most of the MISAKO & ROSEN artists, same as me, have a lot of memories. My exhibition opening in 2010 with Shofukutei Riko , also I remember that the stairs were functioning well as auditorium seats; also Misako & Jeffrey made a drawing for my exhibition of the theme “If Roman Ondak is to appear in MISAKO & ROSEN….”, that drawing included stairs, naturally.
That stairs were a signature for that space.
─ Yuki Okumura

I am only the one who didn’t memorialize the stairs among 4 photographers in this “sayonara Kidan” exhibition. other three photographers took each photographs in the space with the stairs. Then I took the last one which is hanging in the new space. So it seems like memories of stairs are pushed to the edge in my last photographs, wondering that memories will have come from each person’s mind?Instead of taking a photpgraph of actual stairs, I went to the space during demolition. It was during demolition so I couldn’t step in to see the stairs, I glanced at the space and took photographs, combined my memories around the stairs so it was connected to the stairs via obscure memories, it is actually difficult to remember the actual stairs from my photo.
But now strangely, I clearly remember the stairs, why is that? Up and down the stairs and hanging works with Misako & Jeffrey, sitting down on the stairs and enjoying a chat with my old (natsukashii) friend visiting my exhibition. Many of memories are expanding. Thank you, Kaidan.
─ Ayako Mogi

Everyone who was sitting on that stairs looked like children. The Stairs are like a bank by the river side.
─ Takashi Yasumura

Gallery opening is for selling expensive things but after the opening we see trash and visitors steps everywhere on the stairs.
This is like a stairs in train station.
─ Ken Kagami

The first time I sat on the steps at Misako & Rosen was in the summer of 2008, I was taking part in a group show called Here’s Why Patterns and had just arrived off the plane, I was tired and had not been in Japan for 3 or 4 years, I was really disoriented. I was also confused by the steps. They made for a weird entrance to a gallery, you had to go down to enter the space as it were, they interrupted the wall. They were difficult somehow but also offered an informal opportunity to sit down, to pause, just as I was doing. Some years later, with my second solo show at the gallery I used the steps as a place to ‘sit’ a painting of mine, which in turn sat on it’s packing box, but that too was really part of the painting. Now my work was sitting on the steps, with the audience.
─ Fergus Feehily

I have habit to sit down to everywhere which seems bad mannered, so I like the stairs because they are for sitting.
─ Kazuyuki Takezaki

The stairs were a very good way to get from the upper floor to the lower floor of the gallery.
─ Nathan Hylden, Los Angeles 2016.

These are the stairs on which I’ve sat the most in my life. I spent most of my time on the stairs when I was in the gallery.
─ Kaoru Arima

I have a long friendship with these stairs. My first exhibition was in 1997 at Taka Ishii Gallery right after I graduated from university. It seems a coincidence that I met Misako and Jeffrey and since MISAKO & ROSEN opened in 2006, I had many opportunities to exhibit again in this same space. I used a projector to present my film so the space was dark throughout most of my exhibition and during the opening reception but when I sat on the stars, I could naturally talk to people and this was very nice.
─ Naotaka Hiro