EXHIBITION
Exhibition2018
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Collection Asian Landscapes / AWAZU Kiyoshi: Makurihirogeru 5 (EXPOSE)" −Book Illustrations
2018.11.3(Sat.) - 2019.5.6(Mon.)
The many art styles coming out of Asia, while attuned to their particular vernacular history and culture, intently explore the interval between tradition and rapid globalization, working trial and error. This exhibition presents works that challenge the waves of post-industrialization and technological change, asking the universal question, “Where is humanity headed?” SUH Do Ho’s Home within Home – 1/11th Scale – Prototype will be displayed in the exhibition’s first period. The work—a 1/11-scale recreation of the Western building Suh first lived in when studying in the United States—is seen on closer inspection to contain a replica of his childhood Korean-style home. Zai Kuning will exhibit the culmination of his project researching and creatively substantiating the name of the first Malay King, Dapunta Hyang Jayanasa. The artist UJINO, in his sound sculpture Plywood Shinchi, employs everyday objects to evoke a “city” strongly nuanced with nostalgia. Japan is currently gripped by excitement over the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games, a mood reminiscent of the fever infecting the nation in the 1960s period of rapid economic growth. UJINO’s moving sculpture, while humorous in its motions, appears to harshly question materialistic civilization. In Parade from far far away, TERUYA Yuken, an Okinawan artist now living and working in New York, depicts motifs of dugongs, military drones and over 110 Okinawa people, using dye on a traditional Ryukyuan garment. Jun NGUYEN-HATSUSHIBA, in beautiful film images, evokes the nameless people whose lives have been sacrificed in times of political and social upheaval. Featured, along with film works concerning refugees and minorities, embarked on in 2001, is his recent piece dedicated to the Tohoku people who suffered a natural disaster ten years later in 2011. These works, illuminating our changing society from the perspectives of Asian artists, are displayed under the theme, “Asian Landscapes.”
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Aperto 09
Nishimura Yu paragraph
2018.10.6(Sat.) - 2019.3.24(Sun.)
NISHIMURA Yu (1982- ) complexly overlays commonplace scenes and actions, and fragments of “fulfillment” in everyday life to construct a single unified scene in a painting. His approach resembles that of a novelist assembling words and forming paragraphs to weave a narrative. While personal and small in scale, Nishimura says, the momentary scenes and pleasant spaces of our days lend us psychological support. While always concrete in nature, the phenomena Nishimura depicts appear as if occurring in a place remote from reality, owing to his characteristic blurred brushstrokes and coloring. This exhibition’s title, “paragraph,” implies one complete unit. When we see each painting as a paragraph and move through the exhibition, reading and absorbing the pictures dispersed throughout the venue, the rich everyday moments and scenes they portray will congeal in a narrative and speak to us. Viewers will likely want to remain endlessly in the venue’s spaces, looking at Nishimura’s paintings and imagining, not one, but multiple narratives. Featured will be 13 new works of varying sizes, displayed so as to draw viewers deeply into the narrative.
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Culture City of East Asia 2018 Kanazawa
Altering Home
2018.9.15(Sat.) - 2018.11.4(Sun.)
22 exhibiting artists decided ! Neighborhood encounters East Asian art In our modern age, a “home” is structured as a social system. Although the architectural, physical “house” is easy to generalize, the meaning of “home,” which is entwined with emotions, customs and culture, is difficult to capture unless it is considered multilaterally. In particular, nowadays when mobilization has become permanent by means of globalization, can “houses” or “homes” be found anywhere – or possibly, nowhere? Based on this question, within some of the unused spaces of Kanazawa, contemporary artists from Japan, China, and Korea will present their works on the theme of “home.”
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CULTURE CITY OF EAST ASIA 2018 KANAZAWA Cooperative Projects
Qiu Zhijie Living Writing
2018.9.8(Sat.) - 2019.3.3(Sun.)
Living Writing Through writing, primarily using the Chinese traditional calligraphy he learned as a child, QIU Zhijie has continually inquired into universal, primordial human existence. Fujian Province, where he was born, was once a vital center for seaborne trade, rich in cultural exchange born from commerce and immigration. Qiu’s works with their dynamic, free perspective are deeply influenced by the culture of his home region. This exhibition examines the art and expressive power of Qiu Zhijie, who sees the world comprehensively and merges his own existence with representation of the relationships between people and things.
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lab.3
DeathLAB: Democratizing Death
2018.7.7(Sat.) - 2019.3.24(Sun.)
DeathLAB, founded by Karla Rothstein at Columbia University in 2013, is an interdisciplinary initiative exploring the space and social consequence of urban disposition and memorialization. Housed at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, DeathLAB’s cross-cutting research engages diverse academic fields, including architecture, environmental engineering, religious studies and sociology. We will introduce the lab’s ongoing work, which intertwines sacred space and civic life.
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Starting Points: Japanese Art of the ‘80s
2018.7.7(Sat.) - 2018.10.21(Sun.)
As a repercussion of the conceptual and stoic art of the 1970s, and in response to trends in Europe and the United States, Japan in the ’80s bore witness to movements that urged the reinstatement of the painting and sculpture media. What came to prevail as a result was “New Painting” characterized by vibrantly colorful and dynamic brushstrokes that reflected the flourishing economic circumstances of the times. In the ‘90s, art thrived on the energy of ’80s subcultures such as “otaku,” but as a consequence, ’80s art faded from art historical discourse. In recent years both in Japan and abroad, rapid progress has been made in research on Postwar Japanese art up until the 1970s including “Gutai” and “Mono-ha.” Hence, we now find ourselves compelled to examine Japanese art of the intervening decade— the ’80s. Looking back, over 30 years later, we will see that art forms and concepts fundamental to today’s art blossomed in the ’80s, such as the art installation, viewer participation in the artwork, valuing relationship with society, the concept of alternative space, media art, perspectives of relativizing the institution of "art,” and the sensitivity to find significance in mundanity and lightness. This exhibition reconsiders Japanese art of the 1980s through contemporary perspectives and introduces works that represent “Starting Points.”
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Aperto 08
Nanakarage Ayano
2018.4.28(Sat.) - 2018.9.24(Mon.)
Taking as her theme the vastness of nature seen in mountains and forests, and the ephemerality of rainbows and mist, NANAKARAGE Ayano (1987-) meditates on such natural phenomena and, blending in her own interpretations and analogies, evokes its qualities in wood sculptures. Her “rainbows edge” series, featured in this exhibition, conjoins her own fabric-draped figure with the shapes of dried banana stems and other dried and withered plants. Her fusion of withered and gnarled plants with smooth drapery (a human figure) conveys a disquieting impression of old age melded with youth or some bizarre creature hidden under the fabric. At the same time, the works evoke the serenity of Buddhist or Shinto deity sculptures as well as the dread of having seen something forbidden. Vibrant living organisms age with time and grow dry and gnarled, and slowly change form. In such transformation, Nanakarage discovers a transcendent beauty. Her eye, as such, has the power to refresh our values as people of contemporary society conditioned to look away from deterioration and decay.
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Ay Tjoe Christine : Spirituality and Allegory
2018.4.28(Sat.) - 2018.8.19(Sun.)
Ay Tjoe Christine (b. 1973) was born in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, and is a renowned contemporary artist active in Indonesia today. She studies intaglio printing methods such as drypoint and then turned to working with textiles. Her artistic activities got their real start around 2000. Ay Tjoe Christine’s works express themes based on Christian mythologies and spiritual concepts, supported by her deep insight into human incompletion and Janus-faced nature. The color fragments that scatter and float across her pictures reveal, on one hand, the actions of her own wavering emotions, while the abstract images that set up fascinating harmonies with the canvas’ negative space reveal her sincere stance as she investigates the relationship between humans and all things. This is Ay Tjoe Crhistine’s first solo exhibition at a Japanese museum, presenting about 50 works that trace her two decades of multifaceted creativity, from early period drawings and drypoint, to a group of oil paintings that explore the potential for expression from the representational to the abstract, soft sculptures and large-scale installations, and large format paintings created for this exhibition.
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Runa ISLAM Scale (1/16 inch= 1 foot)
2018.4.28(Sat.) - 2018.6.24(Sun.)
From the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa collection, we are pleased to present Runa Islam’s Scale (1/16 inch = 1 foot) in its first showing. Runa Islam continually explores the concepts behind cinematic ideas, subjects, and forms, as well as film’s power to affect our perception and reception of ideas and images. In her early films and installations, she referenced experimental and avant-garde films, and used their film lexicon to develop her own methodology. Analyzing and grasping the images, styles, and methods of modern cinema, she disrupts the relationships between reality and fiction, between visual and architectural space and between “seeing” and “being seen,” and throws the viewer’s interpretation of the narrative into confusion. By means of this process, she constructs a cinematic experience from her own perspective on the world. This work, a two-screen video installation, features a multilevel car park in Gateshead in northeast England that appears in a scene from the film Get Carter (1971, UK). Filmed on a stage set that imagines an unbuilt restaurant originally planned for the building’s top floor, it depicts interactions between two young waiters and two elderly male customers. At a certain moment, the actors exchange roles, and images of the actual location and the stage set, as well as the building and building model, become shuffled to up-tempo music. While the work uses the lexicon of suspense films—the looks and gestures of the actors, the camerawork, the switching between scenes, the lighting, the music, and so on—the shifting between reality and illusion is depicted with a lyrical touch. Moreover, because the screens are positioned one in front of the other, the audience becomes lost in the entangled world depicted in the work without being able to fully grasp it.
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Collection Exhibition Adventure in “Seeing”
2018.1.27(Sat.) - 2018.6.24(Sun.)
Seeing is something most of us take for granted. Yet, to consciously see is surprisingly difficult, and as a result, we tend to miss much of what there is to see. An art museum is a place for “seeing,” “admiring,” and “thinking about” artworks. To the visitors to this exhibition, whether they normally enjoy viewing artworks or find it difficult, we would like to say, “First of all, begin by seeing well.” The exhibition “Adventures in ‘Seeing’” starts there. Open yourself to the artwork a little more than usual. Stand and view it 10 seconds longer than usual. After viewing it thoroughly, relax and view it a little more. Doing so, you will begin to see details you had not noticed, and your imagination will have time to come into play. Discoveries, surprises, and new feelings will come to you in an experience really no different from an adventure story. Please look actively at the artworks and unfold your very own adventure story. (YAMASHITA Juri, exhibition curator)
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Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller
2017.11.25(Sat.) - 2018.3.11(Sun.)
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s works display a command of sophisticated sound and video technology, and striking sculptural creations. The viewer undergoes a complex perceptual experience of “hearing and seeing” and enters their imaginative world in a spell of enchantment. When experiencing a Cardiff and Bures Miller work, unseen things become visible, soundless things are heard, and we suddenly step beyond reality into their stories with our senses and values in disarray. Cardiff and Bures Miller’s exhibition at this time features new works and eight installations being shown in Japan for the first time. Installed in the spatially autonomous galleries of this museum, the pieces will transport the audience to imaginary interconnected worlds. A precious opportunity to experience the work of a groundbreaking international artist team.
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Local Textile 1
TO & FRO Thinner, Lighter
2017.11.18(Sat.) - 2018.6.24(Sun.)
Part 1 the “Local Textile” series features TO & FRO, a travel gear brand of the Kaji Group based in Kanazawa and Kahoku. The brand’s name evokes an image of traveling lightly and comfortably “to and fro.” The Kaji Group, possessing advanced technology for weaving extremely thin thread, is producing fabric of unusually light nylon. The nylon fabric is currently used in products by outdoor brands around the world. TO & FRO is the Kaji Group’s own brand of travel organizers and other products created using this fabric. The travel organizers are displayed in this exhibition along with a wide range of fabric samples. Ishikawa prefecture, as a textile producer, has also developed a loom manufacturing industry. Although textile production tends to rely on division of labor, the Kaji Group possesses its own plant for customizing looms. Innovative production at the plant has enabled thread tensioning conducive of weaving with the thinnest, most easily breakable threads. High functionality is a powerful competitive edge over inexpensive mass-produced imported products and an important strategy for the future of Japan’s textile industry.
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TARO IZUMI A Child Suddenly
2017.10.7(Sat.) - 2018.3.25(Sun.)
Taro Izumi (1976 – ) is an artist mainly known for his installations that cross video, performance, drawing, painting, sculpture and other media, exhibiting his work frequently at home and abroad. Izumi’s work characteristically involves everyday matters and objects, and sometimes large numbers of people; by capturing actions that appear at first sight to have no real significance, Izumi highlights absurd experiences that lurk in everyday life. Time and space, real and virtual image, inside and outside, free and unfree – Izumi’s practice plays with and blurs such conventional divisions which we unthinkingly impose on the world, questioning them from startling angles. In this exhibition, Izumi is presenting four new artworks and one book project. Staged in Theater 21 and the Long-Term Project Room is B: But the lens had clearly captured the passing tiger., a work consisting of feature films – the artist’s first such endeavor – along with film posters and a popcorn stand. On the outside of the Long-Term Project Room, there is The Transparent Drool of Fantasy, a work whose concept is “windows fitted with night.” Dawn of the Compact Structures, which will be released halfway through the exhibition period, is a series of videos that superimposes multiple layers of time, resulting in a novel structure for a film. On top of these, works will be completed and added to the exhibition over Izumi’s long-term stay at Kanazawa, including Y: Raise your knee, now lower it. P: I put the stones away so they won’t trip., which sets its sights on the visitors to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Alongside these video works and installations, Izumi will also collaborate with a critic – a specialist at handling words – to produce A Dark Gray Book (provisional title). This work will explore, in book form, new means of communication that might be able to substitute and improve on words. Izumi has long probed the ever-unsolvable, ever-expanding question concerning the knotted relationship that films and images share with the human body and consciousness. This exhibition promises to be an extremely ambitious undertaking that presents a wholly new approach to this question, while remaining in touch with his practice to date.
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Collection Exhibition 2 Undying Life
2017.7.22(Sat.) - 2018.1.8(Mon.)
Today, with the development scientific technologies such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology, long-standing social values are being vigorously shaken. This exhibition displays works concerned with the “migration” of life forms, ranging in spectrum from the transmigration of souls to the artificial creation of new species. We explore the meaning of creating new life forms and possibilities of living in “artificial nature.”
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