Meiro Koizumi

Meiro Koizumi (*1976) is currently following the residence programme of the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, where his video "The Art of Awakening" was first presented during the Open Ateliers 2005. Set in a dubious pseudo examination setting, the film shows the faces and shoulders of three men who are asked to bend and "poke it with the stick". Although the viewer cannot actually see what the action implies, the poking movement receives an increasingly sexual connotation as the men appear to get more and more aroused. The tension suddenly collapses when the camera moves back from the close-up and reveals the real nature of the action. The film is a tour de force, oscillating between voyeurism and repulsion, sexuality and ridicule, harmlessness and hard core, climax and anticlimax.
Meiro Koizumi attended the International Christian University in Tokyo and the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. He was artist in residence at ARCUS in Japan in 2003 and won the first prize at Beck's Futures 2 in 2001. He has exhibited at the 2002 Liverpool Biennale - New Contemporaries − and elsewhere in Europe, Asia and South America.