21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

The maturation of capitalism showed that everything in the world is measurable in money terms dictated by the market economy. This also applies to works of art. The marketable value of an artwork is even considered the value of the artwork itself, but is it, in fact? Value is an extremely abstract thing, and each person has different standards and preferences. Never in human history was the world so thoroughly ruled by economic values as in the 20th century, and currently, those conditions are accelerating. This section, through works of art, spotlights other values that we need to nurture.

Artist: TERUYA Yuken

In ancient times, the body was a vessel for participating in nature and giving habitation to gods and spirits. With science’s advances, however, the mechanisms of life have gradually been unraveled and, today, the body is reduced to a network of matter manipulatable at a molecular level. This section examines our contemporary perceptions of the body. Through works by artists who look at memory residing in the body, it inquires into the meaning the body has newly acquired/lost in a highly rationalized social environment.

Artists: TANAKA Atsuko, Ana MENDIETA, ODANI Motohiko, OKI Junko, LEE Bul

An object’s data is unique. By duplicating its template, a physical object can be created in space. Not only physical objects: the same kind of method can be used in virtual space for examining the overall system governing it. In the 21st century, due to advancements in virtualization using data, we will likely need to use such terms as “class” and “instance” in addition to original, duplicate, and clone when thinking about objects in art.

Artists: benandsebastian

These days, when communication via smartphone and personal computer is more common than through verbal conversation, we deal with an environment more ambiguous and less supportive of judging whether communication is being achieved. Certainly, we can instantly connect with people far away and easily exchange information, seemingly with anyone. Yet, is real understanding being reached? In a society where voiceless conversation has become indispensable to everyday living, what does “communication” mean?

Artist: IZUMI Taro

Collage—a word deriving from a French verb meaning “to glue.” Surrealist and Cubist artists incorporated this technique in their work in the early 20th century. By combining elements intrinsically unrelated, they could mix meanings as well as forms and structures, and obtain a creativity that transcended intellectual interpretation. The art of collage, with the kitchiness of its cutting and pasting, is frequently seen in contemporary art as well. While printed matter using color photographs brings freshness to the work, the flood of ready-made images from magazines and comics create a sense of parody and irony. Collage also resonates with our visual experience as people accustomed to the “cut and paste” function on computers. Collage is like a paradigm that transcends its utility as an art technique and says something about our perceptions in contemporary society.

Artists: KANEUJI Teppei, SHIMIZU Akira, KUSAMA Yayoi

The 20th century saw remarkable progress in the development of television, video, film, and Internet media, with result that boundaries between reality and fictive film/video imagery grew ambiguous. Today, in the 21st century, massive amounts of video are transmitted day and night on social networks, thereby accelerating conditions in which truth is obscured: we can no longer know what is true and what isn’t. In this artwork, the images appearing are continually replaced indiscriminately, beyond one’s control, thereby creating visual confusion. More than eliciting our interest or fascination, the work is critical of the frenzy in our contemporary viewing habits.

Artist: Mathieu BRIAND

Today, Japanese crafts (kogei) is in a transition from “crafts” that are rooted in the land, whose historical and cultural origins are clear, to “KOGEI” imbued with global character, born from 3D printers and the incessant movement of creators engaged in collaborations and cultural exchange. Contemporary art, on the other hand, is moving in the opposite direction from “crafts”: suffering from excessive globalization, it seeks a return regional character. In our approach to Japanese crafts, we in this section call it KOGEI, thereby creating a context freeing it from confinement in existing categories and genres. Liberating it thus from existing value standards, we take the KOGEI world’s diversity of materials, techniques, and forms as a subject. KOGEI, like contemporary art, is a product of its times. We can therefore find points where they intersect in keywords common to both: the land, the culture, their physicality and materiality, and society.

Artists: “Unryuan” KITAMURA Tatsuo, TERAI Naoji, TOMIMOTO Kenkichi, YAMAMURA Shinya, MAE Fumio, OBA Shogyo, NAKANO Koichi, IKURA Takashi, Bodil MANZ, KAMIDE Keigo, Kamide Choemon-gama + Maruwakaya, AOKI Katsuyo, TAKEMURA Yuri, HASUDA Shugoro, HATAKEYAMA Koji, Pippin DRYSDALE, TOKUDA Yasokichi III, MITSUKE Masayasu, HAYAMA Yuki, KITADE Fujio, OHI Toyasai (Ohi Chozaemon X / Toshiro), KUWATA Takuro, Scott CHASELING, Michael ROWE, Ron KENT, NAKAGAWA Mamoro, OHI Chozaemon XI (Toshio), NAKAMURA Takuo, Rupert SPIRA, SUDA Yoshihiro, OKUMURA Hiroyuki, HASHIMOTO Masaya, KUZE Kenji, ITABASHI Hiromi, NAKAMURA Shinkyo, IEZUMI Toshio, TASHIMA Etsuko, TANAKA Nobuyuki, TSUKADA Midori, OHGITA Katsuya, NARAHARA Hiroko, Jan FIŠAR, Vladimir ZBYNOVSKY, MIYAZAKI Kanchi

SONE Yutaka walks the world’s forests, jungles, caves, deserts, and cities. The landscapes he evokes appear to be landscapes existing autonomously, everywhere. While clearly there before our eyes, they suggest incredible distances as if imbued with a vast narrative transcending human expression. The artist, mobilizing his own experience, memory, sense, and imagination, sublimes events actual or potential, there, in a pure white landscape by sculpting blocks of marble harboring millenniums of time. Through this, then, he endeavors to create a new scenery.

Artist: SONE Yutaka

Since the late 20th century, artists have engaged in endeavors that transgress conventional genres such as painting, sculpture, crafts, and photography or else traverse multiple genres. In the 21st century, owing to change in our social conditions, the materials and techniques used in art are also changing at an accelerating pace, and it is no longer possible to classify works by genre. An important factor behind is that the Western-centric art world has come under criticism, and the art of various regions and cultural areas is receiving renewed scrutiny. Many of the materials taken up in this section are fragile by nature, such as rusty metal, wood, soil, and insects. The techniques are also diverse and complex. How to preserve such works and hand them down to the future is one of the major challenges facing museums today.

Artists: El ANATSUI, ODANI Motohiko, Jan FABRE, NAKAMURA Kimpei, NAKAMURA Kohei, NAKAGAWA Yukio, SUDA Yoshihiro

In the design of urban space, grasping city structure is gaining more importance than the comprehensive view. This is because technological innovation is giving us varying new vantage points on the city beyond our conventional ground view. A tension between polar extremes is giving shape to the city, one being an intent to create clear, beautiful order as represented by the Parthenon, and the other, to let urban space form irregularly like a maze. The motorization developed in the 20th century is changing dramatically, what with electrification and self-driving cars, and the resulting spread of invisible networks is becoming more complex—a trend which will accelerate in the future. In the 21st century, as global populations become concentrated in cities, urban theory is concerned with a generative field where fluidity and exchange/replacement produce dynamic, restless intersection.

Artist: Chris BURDEN

The world exists through “relationships,” and “relationships” give form to daily life. The artworks gathered here examine the myriad relationships between people, between things, and between people and things. ABE Taisuke uses old clothing and fabric pieces as materials for creating art and holding workshops. Old clothing is gathered and given new forms (artworks); as people touch the creations and take them home, invisible relationships expand out beyond the art museum. Then, Abe is also producing works in residency at the museum taking the museum collection as an axis. The works awaken relationships on many levels—between the artist and the collected works, between viewers and the collected works, and between viewers and the artist himself—and give shape to the “everyday” of life at the museum.

Artist: ABE Taisuke

Residency period: 11.3 (Sun-hol)-12.19 (Thu) *Excluding days museum is closed
Workshop period: 2.4 (Tue)-3.1 (Sun) 2020
*Excluding days museum is closed
Time: 10:00-18:00
Venue: Next to People’s Gallery & Project Room

Curators help viewers navigate the exhibition. They discuss the individual artworks from their own perspectives, describing in their own words the concepts behind the artworks, how they were created, and aspects to be attentive to when viewing them. This original audio guide created by 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa lets viewers feel as if personally guided by a curator through the galleries. Download the application to your smartphone or enjoy the rental audio guide.

Cost: Smartphone app: ¥490 (payment by smartphone / purchase at Apple Store)
Rental audio guide: ¥600
Rental location: In front of the general information monitor
Audio guide production: ON THE TRIP