Pop-up Art｜21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

Pop-up Art

2024.4.6 (Sat.) -
2024.7.15 (Mon.)10:00-18:00

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Information

Period:

2024.4.6 (Sat.) -
2024.7.15 (Mon.)10:00-18:00

Venue:

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Admission:

Free

For More Information:

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

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa opened in October 2004 and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
As the first event of the anniversary year, Pop-up Art will be held from spring to summer to show the museum's collection in various locations. The museum building was designed by SANAA Sejima Kazuyo + Nishizawa Ryue and has a distinctive circular shape and all-glass exterior walls. For this exhibition, the artworks are arranged in such a way that they appear in front of you one after another, like a 'pop-up' on the very front of a computer screen, as you make your way around along the interaction zone. The Project Room, also located on the same site, presents a collection of works by Yanobe Kenji that reflect themes such as technology, the environment and the exploration of humanity. And at night, a video work filmed by TOCHKA appears, featuring Kanazawa’s famous landmark.
Please enjoy the great works by 12 artists in accordance with the characteristics of the building, in a bright, open space that is flooded with natural light and stretches horizontally.

Exhibiting artists(in alphabeticai order)

Peter Fischli　David Weiss, Ryan Gander,Shilpa Gupta, Sawa Hiraki, Koganezawa Takehito, Shimabuku, Laurie Simmons, Suda Yoshihiro, Sarah Sze, TOCHKA, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Yanobe Kenji

Main works in the exhibition

Patrick Tuttofuoco, Bycircle (Silvia, Alessandra, Emiko, Ritsu), 2004

Bycircle (Silvia, Alessandra, Emiko, Ritsu) 2004

Patrick Tuttofuoco
Born in Milan, Italy in 1974. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

April 6(Sat)-June 16(Sun)

For the Museum’s Opening Exhibition in 2004, Tuttofuoco created a series of unique tricycle-like works. The title he gave them, Bycircle, is a word of his own creation combining ‘bicycle’ and ‘circle,’ the latter indicating the round shape of the museum building. To the individual works, the artist has given names like ‘Silvia’ and ‘Emiko,’ each being a ‘portrait’ designed after an image of one of his friends. It is fun to ponder the works, wondering which aspect of those friends serving as models he has used and how. Still, the feature truly distinguishing these works is the fact that visitors can actually get on a Bycircle and ride it around the Museum. The works, each a portrait of highly individual character, are ridden by members of the general public, who impart life to them as animate objects. As the tricycles go by, expressions of surprise and delight appear on the faces of other visitors and those of passers-by beyond the glass, producing an expanding chain of varied responses and relationships.
Suda Yoshihiro, Rose, 2004

Rose 2004

Suda Yoshihiro
Born in Yamanashi, Japan in 1969. Lives and works in Tokyo.

Rose hangs suspended in space, like a flower at the moment it has broken off and is falling to the ground. The painstakingly carved petals, so thin as to appear translucent; the leaves bearing insect holes; and the prickly red thorns – Suda has expressed the flower with flawless command of his wood-carving and painting techniques. It is, finally, only the lusterless colors and wood qualities that give it away for what it is, a wood carving. Looking again, we notice that the petals of the rose are scattered to the surrounding walls, as if dancing about in the wind.

Some of the exhibits have been changed.
Shilpa Gupta, Untitled (There is No Border Here), 2005-2006 / 2011

Untitled (There is No Border Here) 2005-2006 / 2011

Shilpa Gupta
Born in Mumbai, India in 1976. Lives and works there.

This work deals with the territorial dispute over the Kashmir region, a multinational issue involving India, Pakistan, and the People’s Republic of China which emerged in the early twentieth century and is still unresolved. The conflict between India and Pakistan has especially affected Gupta personally since her childhood, and this work critically examines the reality of the invisible boundary lines that separate these two nations. The yellow plastic tape printed with the simple statement, “There is no border here,” creates a paradoxical situation in which one area can be separated from surrounding areas by simply stretching a single strip of tape around it. This artificial method of clearly dividing the inside from the outside is used to maintain internal security and keep an area separate from different countries, religions, and cultures outside it that are regarded as unassimilable. As the world continues to become more complex in the current century, this work gives us a new awareness of the nature of the freedom and security that we believe in and the existence of imaginary borders. It can also be seen as an artistic expression typical of a new generation that attempts to overcome the misunderstanding, or lack of understanding, of conditions that arise through differentiation in a new way that does not involve violent conflict or resistance.
Shimabuku,Born as a Box ,2001

Born as a Box 2001

Shimabuku
Born in Hyogo, Japan in 1969. Lives and works in Okinawa.

Born as a Box is a work in which a corrugated box itself speaks in the Kobe dialect of the artist’s hometown, talking about communication with people as a box and its identity. The box says that it can accept life positively because there is communication with people. Thus, his work is not only beautiful and humorous at first sight, but also it is filled with tolerance to receive everything as it is, continuously generating the pleasure and preciousness of communication with people and the environment to produce them.
Ryan Gander,A machine to send you somewhere else,2020

A machine to send you somewhere else 2020

Ryan Gander
Born in Chester,UK in 1976. Lives and works in London/Suffolk, UK.

The work A machine to send you somewhere else prints the latitude and longitude of an arbitrary point on the earth from a ticketing machine embedded in the wall. Despite the coincidental connection, a door is instantly opened that leads to the place indicated by the numbers - what kind of place it is, how to get there, or whether it is a place you already know or a completely unknown place. The suggestion that the given coordinates allow free travel according to the imagination can be seen as a response to a time when mobility was restricted by pandemics.
Koganezawa Takehito,Setting the Butterfly Free, 2015

Setting the Butterfly Free 2015

Koganezawa Takehito
Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1974. Lives and works in Hiroshima.

Setting the Butterfly Free is a video artwork that combines drawing and Koganezawa’s experience in performance, one of his chief focuses in recent years. The work centers on a notebook, every page of which is covered in dots of various colors made by dripping ink. Footage of Koganezawa rhythmically leafing through this notebook is shown on a monitor accompanied by the sound generated by this action. The colorful dots wriggle like worms, appearing and disappearing repeatedly. As an animation technique it is primitive, but the dots, which have bled through and permeated the paper, create symmetrical patterns on facing pages, while the movement and sound call to mind the flapping of butterfly wings.
Sawa Hiraki, airliner, 2003

spotter 2003
elsewhere 2003
airliner 2003

Sawa Hiraki
Born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan in 1977. Lives and works in London, UK.

In his early works, Sawa depicted the polarity of the ordinary and the extraordinary in videos shot in the most ordinary and private of spaces in the form of the apartment in which he lived. In spotter, in which the outside world intrudes into private space, airplanes, which enable people to fly all over the world in a short space of time, invade Sawa’s room and float around, while groups of people in different locations around the room follow their movements with binoculars and so on as they fly back and forth overhead. In elsewhere, which depicts the extraordinary quietly unfolding in the midst of the ordinary, a kettle, a toilet paper roll, a shampoo bottle and other everyday items sprout legs and begin to wander around Sawa’s apartment. For the movement of the legs, Sawa used photographs originally used in chronophotography, a technique developed at the end of the 19th century before the invention of cinematography in which the body was photographed continuously in an attempt to analyze scientifically the movement of the human body. In airliner, Sawa’s style of assimilating the outside world from his own perspective by drawing it into individual space is expressed in the even smaller world of a book. The card-flipping cartoon technique in which the airplanes look like they are moving as the pages are turned calls to mind the origins of cinematography, while the endless repetition of the page-turning movement gives the piece a sense of perpetuity.
TOCHKA, PIKA PIKA in Kanazawa 2008,2008

PIKA PIKA in Kanazawa 2008 2008

TOCHKA
Nagata Takeshi: Born in Kumamoto, Japan in 1978.
Monno Kazue: Born Nara, Japan in 1978.
Both live and work in Kyoto.

“PIKA PIKA” is an animation series made up of long-exposure photographs that have captured the trails of penlights waved through the air. “PIKA PIKA Project in Kanazawa” is a project consisting of around 3,000 such penlight doodle photographs made in workshops with local residents of Kanazawa. The work was made taking into consideration TOCHKA’s own impressions of Kanazawa – that of a place where the people have had the foresight to reinvent their town over time and thus maintain its attractiveness to outside visitors. In the work PIKA PIKA in Kanazawa 2008,the path traced by the penlight in each photograph indicates the duration and the depth of the time that each participant devoted to the project. This work consists not simply of the resulting animation, but also the workshop program through which it was created.
Laurie Simmons, The Music of Regret,2005-2006

The Music of Regret 2005-2006

Laurie Simmons
Born in Far Rockaway, USA in 1949. Lives and works in New York.

The Music of Regret is Simmons’ first film, made using the objects and dolls familiar from her photographic works from the 1970s and beyond. It takes the form of a musical in three acts: ‘Green Tie,’ featuring puppets; ‘The Music of Regret,’ featuring ventriloquists’ dummies; and ‘Audition,’ featuring dolls from the “Walking Objects” series. The only human actor in the film is Meryl Streep, who plays the part of Simmons opposite a number of ventriloquists’ dummies in a scene in which she reminisces about past love affairs. The chorus beginning with the lines ‘Would’a, should’a, could’a…’ and the crooning voices singing comical and melodramatic tunes, give expression to the subtleties of the genuine feelings of regret and desire we usually hide as we go about our day-today lives, portrayed melodramatically, full of vivid colors yet at the same time charged with pathos. Simmons was responsible for the stage design, screenplay and lyrics. The film makes full use of analog and digital techniques in the image processing of the complex relationship between the dolls and the backdrops and in the use of the same lighting methods when filming using actual people as those used when filming the dolls and the miniature sets.
Sarah Sze,The Art of Losing, 2004

The Art of Losing 2004

Sarah Sze
Born in Boston, USA in 1969. Lives and works in New York.

Created to fit in the stairwell near the west entrance to the museum, The Art of Losing can be approached from several different directions. Inspired by the construction of the stairs, which double back as they connect the ground floor and the basement level, the artist has created the work in such a way that its appearance changes as if following the movements of the visitors as they ascend and descend. The way the spiral-like structure hangs in midair also expresses this ascending/descending motion, producing a state of tension between the structure and gravity. At the same time, the mainly white structure gives the work a certain lightness and brightness. The work incorporates familiar, mass-produced tools and other objects such as cotton buds, PET bottles and other plastic containers, woollen yarn, tape measures, and clips, and colors that call to mind tools and construction sites such as yellow, green, and orange, all combined in a way that gives a certain sense of order. As a result, the intricately arranged installation achieves an exquisite balance while dispensing with centrality and dispersing/expanding the state of tension in various different directions. As well, the plants lend the entire work a feeling of vitality, while the wind from the electric fans and the light emitted by the lamps call to mind energy and represent an attempt to portray processes of nature at work in the architectural structure.
Yanobe Kenji,Tanking Machine, 1990

Mickey Mask 1991(original version)/2000(copy version)
Marking Dog 1991
VIVA REVIVAL PROJECT: STAND-UP 2001
Tanking Machine 1990
Mini Tanking Machine 2004

Yanobe Kenji
Born in Osaka, Japan in 1965. Lives and works there.

April 6(Sat)-June 9(Sun)

Tanking Machine is a three-dimensional work that viewers can go inside. A spherical tank is filled with saltwater that is kept at the same salinity and temperature as the human body. By floating inside the tank, it is possible to experience a sensation similar to being inside the womb prior to birth. The exterior could be resembled as an exaggerated self-portrait. Mickey Mask is a wearable artwork consisting of a gas mask fitted with a pair of opera glasses and two cooking ladles to focus the wearer’s sight and hearing. Putting on the mask enables you to examine things in the distance, but your field of vision becomes very small, so you tend to stumble. Marking Dog is a work based on reconnaissance machines used by spies. It is a working machine that can be operated by a viewer. Each of Yanobe’s works combines a futuristic image with low-fi materials and techniques. VIVA REVIVAL PROJECT: STAND-UP is a new work on the theme of revival. It is modeled on a child, who stands up after counting 20 radiation exposures. According to Yanobe, this work signifies ‘rebirth after despair.’ This work started from finding a doll in an abandoned kindergarten in Chernobyl, the Soviet city where a nuclear reactor accident occurred in 1986 and the birth of Yanobe’s own first child turned his work to a new direction.
Peter Fischli David Weiss, Untitled (Concrete Landscape) ,2010

Untitled (Concrete Landscape) 2010
Kling Klong 2010

Peter Fischli David Weiss

Peter Fischli: Born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1952. Lives and works there.
David Weiss: Born in Zurich in 1946. Died there in 2012.

Untitled (Concrete Landscape) is a hand-wrought rectangular object. Displayed outdoors, it is exposed to rain and sun, covered in dust, and grows moss, all modifying its uneven surface and making it a landscape reflecting phenomena of the natural world. The audio piece Kling Klong was created with the display space of Untitled (Concrete Landscape) in mind, and consists of a gentle metallic tone that mingles with ambient sounds to produce an improvised soundspace.