Collection Exhibition 2: Drifting in the City｜21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Collection Exhibition 2: Drifting in the City

2024.10.12 (Sat.) - 2025.1.19 (Sun.)

Information

Period:

2024.10.12 (Sat.) - 2025.1.19 (Sun.)

Venue:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Gallery 1 to 4, Design Gallery, Long-Term Project Room, and Public Zone

Admission:

Adults: ¥450 (¥360)
Students: ¥310 (¥240)
18 and under: free
65 and over: ¥360
*Fees in parentheses are for groups of 20 people or more

Book tickets here

Closed:

Mondays (except October 14, October 28, November 4 and January 13),October 15, October 29, November 5, December 29 – January 1 and January 14)

Kanazawa Citizens Free Viewing Days:
On the dates below, the citizens of Kanazawa can view “Collection exhibitions 2: Drifting in the City” for free.
(Proof of residency required)
・Kanazawa Citizens Free Art Day “Open Museum 2024” : November 3 (Sun/holiday)
・Promote the Arts Day: On the second Saturday of each month during the exhibition (October 12, November 9, December 14, January 11)

For More Information:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Phone: +81-76-220-2800
E-Mail: info@kanazawa21.jp

The museum’s collecting activities began in 2000, before the opening of the museum, and have continued up until the present day. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the museum, we will look back on the history of the museum collection through large-scale exhibitions that will run throughout the year.

One of the museum’s collection policies is to select “works produced since 1980 that propose new values.” Urbanization has become an important theme in contemporary art since the 1980s, and has been featured in exhibitions around the world. Many of them reflect how capitalism has developed and the age of globalization, presenting the problems brought about by urbanization as a metanarrative. The smaller narratives derived from the personal experiences behind the works are merely footnotes to this metanarrative. Cities, that have been developing at high speed since the Industrial Revolution, seem to be moving forward like rivers rushing through day and night, violently erasing individual human memories and feelings. “Collection Exhibition 2: Drifting in the City” showcases the works from the museum collection that focus on the personal experiences of urban life, based on the theme of how individuals might engage in self-care as they drift along on the river of the city. Like the smell of dinner in the city at 5 pm or the flash of neon lights at 11 pm, these works promise to trigger the viewer’s memories of everyday life buried in the busyness of our day-to-day routines.
Yishu Hang (Registrar)

Related Programs

Collection Exhibition 2 Opening Artist Talk by Muneteru Ujino

Date: October 13 (Sun), 2024, 13:00-14:30
Venue: Lecture Hall, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
* This event has ended.

Artist Talk Atelier Bow-Wow & Furni-cycle Experience Event

Date: Weekend in mid-November 2024, 14:00-15:30 (tentative)
Venue: Lecture Hall, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
*We will announce the details on our website and social media as soon as they are fixed.

Gallery tour by curator

Date: November 2024, 14:00-14:45 (tentative)
Meeting place: behind the ticket counter
*We will announce the details on our website and social media as soon as they are fixed.

Gallery tour by internship trainee

Date: November 2024, 14:00-14:45 (tentative)
Meeting place: behind the ticket counter
The museum offers internships to graduate students who are interested in museum activities and curatorial work, and who intend to work in fields related to museums, art, and lifelong learning in the future. As an opportunity to put what they have learned into practice, our internship trainees will give gallery tours.
*We will announce the details on our website and social media as soon as they are fixed.

Introduction to the exhibiting artists

SUPER RAT (Showcase) 2011–2012
3 videos, mixed media
demensions variable
(3 videos: 2 min. 22 sec., 2 min. 28 sec., 3 min.)
© Chim↑Pom
Courtesy of MUJIN-TO Production

Chim↑Pom

On view: October 12 (Sat) — December 1 (Sun), 2024
SUPER RAT (Showcase), 2011–2012

Formed in 2005 by Ellie, Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Toshinori Mizuno, Masataka Okada, and Motomu Inaoka. Since its inception, the group has garnered attention for an artistic practice that exposes the problems and darkness confronting the world out of their own personal interest in these issues through extremely direct actions using their own bodies as a medium, documenting them in photographs and videos. In 2022, the group changed its name to “Chim↑Pom from Smappa! Group.”

SUPER RAT, which might be said to be the foundation of Chim↑Pom’s activities, is a work consisting of video footage and accompanying objects that document the act of capturing the black rats that inhabit downtown areas with insect-catching nets. Chim↑Pom, who saw themselves in the image of the Super Rats that have been exterminated in Shibuya Center Gai since 2006, resulting in their increased ability to metabolize poison and ability to survive in the city, created the work SUPER RAT as a self-portrait. SUPER RAT (Showcase), in which they tackle this motif once again following the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, is a reconfiguration of footage shot in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The work consists of three videos: one depicting the capturing in 2006, another the capturing in 2011, and the third one their observations of the rat ecology. The rats in Shibuya captured in this work are part of the urban landscape, and are inhabitants of the city themselves. The evolution and survival of these rats, which exude a kind of vital life force amid the threats to the environment and our way of life, is juxtaposed with an image of future humanity.
HOMEJOURNEY 2005
White clay, slipped
H19 × W21 × D19cm
© Canan DAGDELEN
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

Canan DAGDELEN

On view: December 3 (Tue), 2024 — January 19 (Sun), 2025
HOMEJOURNEY, 2005
HOMELIKE II, 2005

Born in 1960 in Istanbul, Turkey. Based in Vienna, Austria. Dagdelen, who moved to Vienna at the age of 20 and still lives there today, creates artworks on themes such as “homeland” and “home” that are light and airy yet carry a strong message. Her works are characterized by a supple sensibility, based on references to the cultural roots of her birthplace, such as Turkish architecture, art, and calligraphy. Her works also present a critical perspective on the notion of human belonging and identity with regard to borders, ethnicity, and culture.

HOMEJOURNEY, a sculpture with a form reminiscent of both Ottoman architecture and yurts (nomadic tented dwellings), is not rooted to the ground, but instead displayed as if it were flying sideways. The subject of the photographic work HOMELIKE II is supposed to be the back view of an immigrant woman walking down the street carrying several shopping bags. Taking the personal sensations and experiences of an immigrant as her starting point, Dagdelen questions the various ways that we “dwell” in contemporary society and our flexible interpretations of the notions of “home” and “community.”
TOKYO SUBURBIA: Girl-1, Shonan International Village, Kanagawa 1995
Chromogenic print
H125 × W100cm
© HOMMA Takashi

HOMMA Takashi

On view: December 3 (Tue), 2024 — January 19 (Sun), 2025
“TOKYO SUBURBIA” series, “M” series

Born in 1962 in Tokyo, Japan, and currently based there. Homma studied photography at the depar tment of photography at Nihon University College of Art. Since the late 1980s, he has worked mainly for domestic and international fashion magazines, advertising photography, CD covers, and other projects. On the other hand, he has also been photographing landscapes of “new towns” in various cities and suburban areas as well as the children who live there with a unique sense of distance, and compiling them into his own series of works.

The subjects of the “TOKYO SUBURBIA” series are the city, its surroundings, and the lives of its residents, while those of the “M” series of silkscreen works are McDonald’s restaurants around the world. As a way of putting into practice what Homma describes as “an attempt to question various ways of looking at the world through photography,” these series were photographed without imbuing the everyday scenes with any special significance.
Stock Exchange 2000
Video
3 min. 1 sec.
© sislej xhafa, courtesy of the artist

Sislej XHAFA

On view: December 3 (Tue), 2024 — January 19 (Sun), 2025
Stock Exchange, 2000

Born in 1970 in Peja, Kosovo (former Yugoslavia), based in New York, USA. Xhafa has a diverse practice spanning photography, video, sculpture, installation, and performance. Many of his works, however, explore themes of migration and displacement, violence and power, and prejudice and marginalization that are connected to the warfare and sociopolitical conditions in his native country.

Stock Exchange is a video of a performance by Xhafa at a train station in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The artist himself, dressed in a business suit, attempts to communicate the arrival and departure of a train in front of a busy display board as crowds of people mill around it, using hand gestures and vocal sounds as if he were a stockbroker trading on the floor of the station. The depiction of the railroad in this video as a means of cross-border transportation in Europe is an implicit reference to the socioeconomic conditions in Eastern European countries, where economic liberalization has forced many people to become migrant workers and emigrants.
The Bunch of Keys 2011
Archival inkjet print
H60 × W45
© CHEN Wei

CHEN Wei

Roadside Malevich, 2016,
Unprecedented Freedom, 2016
Rain in Some Areas, 2010,
The Bunch of Keys, 2011

Born in 1980 in Zhejiang Province, China. As one of the leading artists of the generation born after the country’s one-child and open-door reform policies of the 1980s, Chen Wei uses mainly photography and LED media to capture the gap between the illusion and the reality of urbanization that accompanied rapid economic growth, objectively questioning the place of individual perspectives in society and the relationship between the world and the individual. These works offer an objective and perceptive reexamination of the relationship between the individual and the world, and the individual’s perspective on society.

The Bunch of Keys is a photographic work that features Chen Wei’s father as a motif. A large number of inexpensive
keychains are attached to a bunch of keys hanging down from his pants. Roadside Malevich and Unprecedented Freedom are works using one-line LED billboards, which are often seen on city streets. These unreadable billboards, which are devoid of textual information, are abstracted as an element of the urban landscape, thereby breaking away from their status as a medium of advertising. Rain in Some Areas captures what appears to be a semi-basement room with only a narrow skylight. These works evoke the migrant workers that supported China’s rapid growth from behind the scenes.
skyline-TOKYO- 2019
Aluminum bronze, bronze
H15 × W496 × D4.5cm
© KUNO Ayako
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

KUNO Ayako

skyline-TOKYO-, 2019

Born in 1983 in Tokyo, Japan, and currently based there.
Kuno is an artist who creates metal works mainly using the lost-wax casting method. Her works, which evoke the image of cities that are constantly changing, proliferating, and growing, combine the hard, solid texture of metal with a dedication to detailed design.

Born and raised in Tokyo, Kuno is keenly aware of how the natural environment has been eroded by man-made structures and human hands in urban spaces since the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and depicts urban landscapes drawn with outlines of railroads, highways, and buildings using precise casting techniques. In skyline-TOKYO-, the transformation of other cities is superimposed on a changing Tokyo as it prepares to host the upcoming Olympics. The motif of the work is the view from the Rainbow Bridge over Tokyo Bay, where the sky forms a backdrop to the complex view of buildings, expressways, and cranes under construction.
Women at Work - Under Construction 1999
Video
11 min. 48 sec.
© Maja BAJEVIĆ
Exhibition view of “Under Construction,”
SCCA, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Curator Dunja Blazevic), 1999.
Photo: Haris Memija, Dejan Vekic

Maja BAJEVIĆ

Women at Work - Under Construction, 1999

Born in 1967 in Sarajevo (former Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina) and currently based in Paris, France. Maja Bajevic’s works, which employ performance and video at the core of their expression, are intricately interwoven with her own environment and experiences, and strongly reflect history and social conditions. In particular, she focuses on the issues of immigration, the role of women in society, and the marginalized in her works, which express the problems of contemporary society through multiple perspectives and layers.

Women at Work - Under Construction is representative of Bajevic’s early work and the first of three works produced under the title Women at Work. Scaffolding was erected around the exterior of the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina and covered with netting in order to repair damage that had occurred during the conflict. For five days, Bajević and five women refugees from Eastern Bosnia engaged in a performance in which they added embroidery onto this netting. In this video, the women appear in shifts around sunset as the men finish their work, embroidering silently under the lights. The juxtaposition of artworks as national cultural heritage protected by museums and domestic, local handicrafts, the daytime construction work of men and the quiet embroidery work of women in the dark, and the complex interweaving of the public and private spheres raise problems concerning social conditions and gender issues from multiple perspectives.
Installation view of “Collection Exhibition: Adventure in ‘Seeing,’”
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2018
© Isa GENZKEN
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

Isa GENZKEN

Untitled, 1999 / Christopher, 1998 / Bill, 2000
Lawrence, 2000 / Lehmbruck, 2000 / Karola, 2000 / Daniel, 2000

Born in 1948 in Bad Oldesloe, Germany, and currently based in Berlin. After gaining attention in the early 1980s for her large-scale, floor-mounted sculptures, Genzken has since worked in a wide variety of mediums, including oil painting, photography, and film. She continues to create works that place two opposing concepts on a single platform: roughness and delicacy, openness and closure, or transparency and opaqueness.

The series of sculptures on display at this exhibition is based on the motif of the human figure. Most of these works are modeled after people close to the artist, but some, such as Lehmbruck (a German sculptor who influenced Joseph Beuys), are based on historical figures. Frequently used for these pieces are the building materials such as wood and steel that she consistently employs. She has also stuck layers of photos and mirrors onto these structures, an indication of her interest in the notions of collecting and referencing in her work.
Kanazawa Sliding Doors 2004
H230 × W256 × D1500cm
© Carsten HÖLLER
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

Carsten HÖLLER

Kanazawa Sliding Doors, 2004

Born in 1961 in Brussels, Belgium, and currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. Höller employs a variety of techniques, from single sculptures to large-scale installations spanning an entire space, in order to create works that expand the viewer’s senses by introducing a measure of skepticism about reality that emerges from the uncertainty of perception.

Kanazawa Sliding Doors is a work composed of automatic sliding doors, a common fixture in urban architecture. These fully mirrored doors, made to fit the width of the corridors in the museum’s exhibition area, are placed at equal intervals along their length. Passersby will be able to experience an endless liminal space by inserting themselves into a world of endless reflections each time they pass through these doors.
Muddy Stream from a Mug 2004–2012
Collage of cutout of coffee stain on paper
H11 × W143 × D147cm
© KANEUJI Teppei
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

KANEUJI Teppei

On view: October 12 (Sat) — December 1 (Sun), 2024
Muddy Stream from a Mug, 2004-2012
Games, Dance and the Constructions (Soft Toys) #12, 2015
Endless, Nameless #1, 2014

Born in 1978 in Kyoto, Japan, and currently based there. Kaneuji collects everyday items such as household goods, toys, sporting goods, and other mass produced industrial items, as well as clippings from magazines, books, and wrapping paper, creating sculptures, installations, and video works that evoke images of ceaseless change through joining and deformation.

Muddy Stream from a Mug is a sculpture that combines coffee spills on paper, cut out in the shape of a stain, and industrial products commonly seen in daily life. In Games, Dance and the Constructions (Soft Toys) #12, motifs from the backgrounds of comic books and magazines are copied onto fabric and stuffed into stuffed animals, which are then packed into acrylic boxes. Endless, Nameless #1 is a collage of magazine clippings and other materials that evoke their ceaseless transformations through joining and deformation. The free manipulation of these images of mass-produced commodities, while inherited from Pop Art, retreads the domain and territory of advanced capitalism and art.
waiting for awakening -chair- 2012
Naphthalene, resin, mixed media
H110 × W67.9 × D55.8cm
© MIYANAGA Aiko
Photo: SAIKI Taku

MIYANAGA Aiko

On view: December 3 (Tue), 2024 — January 19 (Sun), 2025
waiting for awakening -chair-, 2012

Born in 1974 in Kyoto, Japan, and currently based in Kanagawa Prefecture. Miyanaga is known for works that visualize natural changes, such as sublimation and crystallization, skillfully incorporating them into objects and installations using materials such as naphthalene and salt to express her reflections on time and memory.

Floating in a cube of resin is a chair made of naphthalene, which sublimates at room temperature and pressure. The pale white of the naphthalene accentuates the absence of the missing subject here, creating a silence that symbolizes memory. However, when the air hole at the foot of the chair is opened, the chair gradually loses its shape through sublimation, and the time that has stopped begins to move again. waiting for awakening -chair- is a figurative representation of how personal memories fade over time.
PLYWOOD SHINCHI 2017
MIDI sequencer, Wooden crates,
household electrical appliances, musical instruments,
cameras, projectors, monitors, etc.
Dimensions variable (time sequence 15 min. 40 sec.)
© UJINO Muneteru
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

UJINO Muneteru

PLYWOOD SHINCHI, 2017

Born in 1964 in Tokyo, Japan, and currently based there. Since the 1990s, Ujino has produced and exhibited his “Love Arm” series of sound sculptures using home appliances. Since 2004, he has been working on “The Rotators” series, a large-scale sound sculpture and performance project combining home appliances and furniture that treats the rotating motor as a symbol of industrial products. Ujino’s works overflow with criticism for the way imported culture was accepted in postwar Japan and our society of mass consumption and waste.

PLYWOOD SHINCHI is a composite, theatrical work that consists of a performance using installations of wooden crates commonly seen in daily life, used to transport industrial products and artworks such as electric guitars and home appliances, that Ujino put together himself in a DIY fashion; a live video of the performance; and a documentary film narrated in English by the artist himself. The video is based on the transformation of Nerima Ward, where Ujino grew up,
into a town of mass consumption during the 1970s and 1980s, as the area was converted into public housing estates on land returned from the U.S. military that had been stationed there, and lined with large-scale facilities. This video is made up of three chapters, the second of which tells the story of the original landscape of his family home and his family history.
Hong Kong Island / Chinese 1998
Marble
H65 × W108.5 × D67cm
© SONE Yutaka
Photo: SAIKI Taku

SONE Yutaka

Hong Kong Island / Chinese, 1998
Two-floor Jungle, 1999
Sculpture Garden with Gardener, 1999
Hello Bat, 1999

Born in 1965 in Shizuoka, Japan, and currently based in Tokyo. Since the early 1990s, Sone has been creating highly conceptual works using a variety of media, including video, performance, sculpture, photography, and drawing.

Hong Kong Island / Chinese, which depicts a night view of Hong Kong Island after its return to China, and Two-floor Jungle, which depicts a jungle as a two-storied manmade structure, are sculpted in marble. Sone uses classical Western sculptural materials and techniques to create contemporary landscapes and imaginary forms. Sculpture Garden with Gardener consists of a series of photographs documenting performances staged on a tropical island edited and presented in the form of a book. These 61 photographs show the artist wandering through a dense jungle holding “a magic wand that can turn any place into a jungle.” He likens the chaotic world to a “sculpture garden” and compares himself to the “gardener” who creates it. The video work Hello Bat consists of footage of countless bats taking off at dusk in a remote forest on the island of Borneo, and is only shown for four minutes at dusk. Using a variety of different media, Sone conjures up realms that extend infinitely while remaining linked to one another.
Furni-cycle 2002
Customized bicycle, customized tricycle, video
Chair cycle: H137 × W112 × D286cm
Table cycle: H100 × W60 × D210cm
Video: 11min. 6sec.
© Atelier Bow-Wow

Atelier Bow-Wow

Furni-cycle, 2002

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto: Born in 1965 in Kanagawa, Japan, and currently based in Tokyo.
Momoyo Kaijima: Born in 1969 in Tokyo, Japan, and currently based there.
They began working as an architectural unit in 1992.

Atelier Bow-Wow’s diverse activities include environmental design from housing to urban planning, publication of urban surveys, furniture design, exhibitions of artworks, and university education. The “wan” in their Japanese name, “Atelier Wan,” refers to the barking of a dog in Japanese. Furni-cycle was created for the Shanghai Biennale in 2002. The artists investigated the use of bicycles and street furniture in Shanghai, noting that bicycles in the city at the time were not only used for transportation, but were also customized in different ways for transporting goods, and that many domestic, social, and commercial activities such as eating, resting, and sewing were carried out on the streets. Based on this research, Atelier Bow-Wow combined two different functions: furniture such as chairs and tables (“furni”), and bicycles (“cycle”). By using bicycles for transportation and putting them together on the street as furniture, living spaces emerge. In showing us the various ways in which streets can be used, this work prompts us to reconsider the nature of public space.
Metropolis 2004
Mixed media
H217 × W496 × D333cm
© Chris BURDEN/Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

Chris BURDEN

Metropolis, 2004

Born in 1946 in Boston, USA, died in Topanga in 2015. Starting in the early 1970s, Burden developed a radical style of performance. He was also an influential conceptual artist who addressed subjects such as wealth, power, and the military.

In Metropolis, he depicted the violence of the city, especially its transportation system. One-way streets intricately intersect with what appears to a New York scene made of toy parts and Lego bricks. The dizzying array of miniature toy cars articulates a contemporary situation where one can never deviate from the constant flow of traffic. The cars that complete a circuit of the streets are collected at the bottom and forced to go back up to the highest street, in a framework that is repeated again and again.
Sea Breeze: Another Dimension, 2024 Version 1992/2024
H350 × W480 × D250cm (digital print: determined by space)
©1992/2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.
All Rights Reserved.
Photo: SUEMASA Mareo
*Reference image

Special Collection Exhibition
MURAKAMI Takashi

On view: October 25 (Fri), 2024 — January 19 (Sun), 2025
Sea Breeze: Another Dimension, 2024 Version, 1992/2024

Born in 1962 in Tokyo, Japan, and currently based in Tokyo and New York, USA. Murakami studied Nihon-ga (Japanese-style painting) at Tokyo University of the Arts, where he completed his doctorate in 1993. He identified a consistent flatness in traditional Japanese painting and contemporary expressions of popular art such as manga, anime, and video games, and proposed his “Superflat” theory. His work challenges the Western-led international art scene and interpretations of postwar Japanese art by foregrounding the uniqueness of Japanese culture.

Sea Breeze is a sculpture from the early stages of Murakami’s career. When the shutters on the front and back sides of this huge metal box on wheels are opened, 16 mercury-vapor lamps arranged in a red circle at the center of the box simultaneously emit 16,000 watts of heat and light. Unlike the image of its title, this work visually shocks the viewer with its violent energy. Sea Breeze: Another Dimension, 2024 Version is a work that employs the entire exhibition space of Sea Breeze. The fluorescent pink and yellow wallpaper is covered with a skull-shaped camouflage pattern, and on top of that are skull-shaped mushroom clouds that reference the 1970s anime series “Time Bokan.” In the clichéd plot of “Time Bokan,” where villains defeated by the heroes ride on bicycles and come back to life from the mushroom cloud, a symbol of death representing the atomic bomb, Murakami found the power to destroy the Orientalist view of Japanese art in the West.
The Fermentation Act 2016
Dimensions variable
© SUPERFLEX
Photo: KIOKU Keizo

Special Collection Exhibition
SUPERFLEX

(project underway, Continued display from collection Exhibition 1)
On view: October 25 (Fir), 2024 — January 19 (Sun), 2025
The Fermentation Act, 2016

SUPERFLEX is an artist unit formed in 1993. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, they develop projects all over the world. SUPERFLEX consider their works to be “tools,” creating platforms that encourage people to think for themselves about issues and relationships inherent in their communities by drawing freely on various media such as graphics, video, and architecture.

The Fermentation Act was created by SUPERFLEX, an artist unit based in Copenhagen, as an experimental device that encourages visitor participation and leads to collaborative creation, likening the circular shape of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa as a petri dish. The exhaled breath of visitors and moisture in the air is collected using a dehumidifier and the resultant liquid, tea leaves and a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) combined to make kombucha, a fermented beverage, which is then stored. Later, sheets of the copy paper used at the museum are dyed using this liquid and dried at the museum. The liquid then evaporated inside the building and the kombucha copy paper will be used by new owners. This results in a circulatory process in which moisture is reduced and paper used. The circulatory process set by the artists creates a new relationship based on the museum as a community.