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NowHere is an exhibition featuring contemporary art from Japan and the Netherlands. Art is being created at this very moment. Always and every day artists produce new work, art that demands attention as well as the public’s judgment. Some works of art may move the beholder, or provide food for thought or change his view. This is the point and the import of art.

ICAEE/Gallery Surge and Het Apollohuis set out to introduce to the public art that is currently created and deemed significant. Het Apollohuis has been doing so here in the Netherlands for sixteen years. Gallery Surge has been likewise engaged in Japan for many years. Because art is being created now and here which is articulate and deserves the public’s attention.

Joining the words ‘Now’ and ‘Here’ yielded ‘NowHere’. This combination has been chosen as a name for this exhibition: a reference to the fact that the presence of art in postmodern society can no longer be taken for granted. The artists which were selected for this exhibition are keenly aware of this and are, each in his or her own manner, exploring new artistic ways of communicating with their public. This simultaneously implies an examination of the roots and the essence of art.

NowHere shows work of fourteen Japanese and Dutch artists. It is an exhibition which comprises twelve installations in an equal number of separate rooms in a monumental factory building along the Vestdijk in the Eindhoven city centre. Exceptionally, the rooms have been made available by Schellens Furnishing Textiles for this special event.

The artists have been given the opportunity to fill the rooms which they have been allocated according to their own idea’s of fortnight prior to the opening ceremony.

NowHere is a joint project of ICAEE, Gallery Surge and Het Apollohuis Eindhoven. Shin-ichi Sakai and Paul Panhuysen collaborated on the planning of this event and selected the artists. Both curators formulate the views which form the basis of this cultural exchange elsewhere in this catalogue.

NowHere was organised in Eindhoven to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Het Apollohuis.