EXHIBITION
Exhibition2021
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Collection Exhibition 2: BLUE
2021.11.20(Sat.) - 2022.5.8(Sun.)
in the visible light spectrum, while long red light waves advance in a straight line, shorter blue ones disperse in all directions, dissolving into the space. As symbolized by the ungraspable likes of sky and water, the color blue is perceived in terms of its depth, and for this reason has aroused feelings of longing and adoration since ancient times. Shifting our gaze to land, we find blue to be a highly unusual color in nature, lapis lazuli for example being prized in both East and West. And just as film director Derek Jarman once described blue as “darkness made visible,” blue is also a color that appears in the interval between light and dark, life and death. As we now turn increasingly inward, blue could also be described as the color that most speaks to our souls. This exhibition presents myriad manifestations of the color blue by artists from different countries and cultures, focusing on the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa collection and encompassing a wide range of genres from painting and sculpture, to craft and film. We are confident it will also shed new light on works on permanent exhibit at the Museum such as Leandro Erlich’s The Swimming Pool, James Turrell’s Blue Planet Sky, and Anish Kapoor’s L’Origine du monde. Also on display will be work by our guest artist for the exhibition: painter and film artist Takashi Ishida, creator of distinctive drawing animations striking in their use of blue coloring and light. Come experience for yourself the myriad tapestries of blue woven by a fascinating and diverse lineup of artist.
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FEMINISMS
2021.10.16 (Sat.) -
2022.3.13 (Sun.) *Title and contents of the exhibition are subject to change.Feminism in Japan from the 1990s onward was linked to popular culture, focused on girls and young women in Europe and the US, and was disseminated through the media. Young women’s activities in Japan were also featured in the media, particularly a brand of feminism that became known as the “Girly Movement.” However, in Japan’s case it cannot be denied that in some ways the movement was less a call for change than it was fodder for the media, turning images of women into objects for consumption. Laws such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1986 and the Basic Act for a Gender Equal Society of 1999 were passed and a gender-equal society seemed to be on the way, but in reality there remained a pervasive sense of incongruity between the individual and society, as seen in the marital and family systems, social norms of heterosexuality, and conventions of femininity and masculinity. Now, in the 2020s, social changes are stirring as small voices raising dissent connect through the Internet and gain strength. Feminism, which was thought of as only for women, is extending a helping hand to anyone who feels out of place in society. In recent years, the word has begun to be used in the plural form: feminisms. Ways of thinking about and understanding feminism differ depending on people’s generation and era, nation and ethnic group, environment and values. The message of pluralistic feminisms is the importance and necessity of members of society mutually acknowledging diverse ways of thinking. In this exhibition, works by nine artists, each with their own perspective, offer a window into expressions of feminism in Japan, and how artists perceive gender, the body, society, and what lies beyond. ●List of works / description
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Countermeasures Against Awkward Discourses : From the Perspective of Third Wave Feminism
2021.10.16 (Sat.) -
2022.3.13 (Sun.) *Title and contents of the exhibition are subject to change.In this exhibition our guest curator, the artist NAGASHIMA Yurie, looks at works (including her own) produced by ten artists whose careers began in the 1990s, and offers fresh interpretations of these works from a feminist viewpoint. Nagashima has been producing photographic work and writing since her own art-scene debut in 1993, all the while harboring doubts about the “onnanoko shashin” (girl photography) label sweepingly applied to her and other female photographers of the same generation. Uneasy with the joking images of feminists propagated by the media in the 1980s, the young Nagashima declined to identify as a feminist herself, yet became a consistent challenger of male-centered values. Nagashima sees this kind of attitudee, which had the effect of rendering feminist practice among the younger generation virtually invisible, as one version of Japanese third wave feminism, and asserts that elements of it can also be found in the output of artists who declined to be part of any “movement” or pursuit of “solidarity.” This exhibition showcases works selected following dialogue between Nagashima and the nine other artists, based on this observation. We hope the diverse offerings in “Countermeasures Against Awkward Discourses,” will give viewers a taste of the great breadth of art practice that can emerge in response to the situations that confront us.
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Collection Exhibition 1: Inner Cosmology
2021.6.15(Tue.) - 2021.11.3(Wed.)
In our day-to-day lives there are a great many things over which we have no power. In the face of this reality, by communicating their thoughts to a specific deity, or perhaps to spirits dwelling in nature, or by looking into their own hearts, since time immemorial people have immersed themselves in the vast cosmos beyond their reach alone, and gone about their lives hoping that this transcendent force will bring them reliable everyday blessings. And now as ever, various acts of prayer, religion, and reflection are part and parcel of our daily lives. One source of the arts, including fine art, music, and dance, also sat alongside these everyday acts. Art, which renders invisible worlds visible, served as a medium to guide people to the infinite universe. And though times change, as long as we continue to seek day-to-day peace in our lives, perhaps this role of art is also manifested in contemporary art, in a different form. “Inner Cosmology” attempts to unravel this aspect of contemporary art through the lens of religion, prayer and reflection (introspection), using mainly works from the Museum’s own collection. By giving visitors a glimpse into myriad cultures from around the world, through their different forms of religion, prayer, and reflection, we hope this exhibition will not only offer a new perspective on art today, but encourage greater understanding of the sheer diversity of religious culture.
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Somewhere Between the Odd and the Ordinary
2021.4.29(Thu.) - 2021.9.26(Sun.)
Today, more than a year after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which began in early 2020, there is still no sign that the virus is abating. While daily life has changed throughout the world, in Japan, a country long prone to earthquakes, typhoons, and other natural disasters, many people are accustomed to living with the anxiety and tension that some kind of threat may arise in everyday life. In this exhibition, we reexamine aspects of everyday life that we have no choice but to be aware of. First of all, what makes an everyday thing everyday? Some of these things include the little habits and daily chores that we carry out in our lives, and the appointments that we make with our family and others in the area. There are also things like the passage of time and landscapes, which remain largely the same. But even when we repeatedly perform some kind of activity as a matter of course, everyday life differs depending on the person or family. Some of the works in this exhibition focus on tiny creative acts in our lives that we tend to ignore or overlook. Others capture the inner workings of the heart when we are faced with sudden loss or disaster. And still others express the ever-changing form of everyday life. What emerges somewhere between the odd and the ordinary is the present. List of works
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Collection Exhibition: Scales
2020.10.17(Sat.) - 2021.5.9(Sun.)
When viewing an object or space, we often sense it to be smaller or larger than we thought. This occurs not simply because of the “size” of the object or space but because our perception arises, relatively, from our viewing position as well as our physical memory of a relationship with the object or space. This exhibition will look at “scale”—a variable based on our relationship with an object—as opposed to “size,” a measurable attribute. Works by the Museum’s collected artists will be displayed in seven galleries having different proportions. In every case, the world expressed by the work—that of landscape, void, resonant sound, personal memory, or the time of plants and inorganic objects—is difficult to measure and will appear different depending on our scale of measurement. This exhibition will give viewers occasion to ponder the varying scales we continually form with our senses. List of works
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MICHAËL BORREMANS MARK MANDERS: Double Silence
2020.9.19(Sat.) - 2021.2.28(Sun.)
Both Michaël Borremans and Mark Manders are known to the world for unique and unconventional expression grounded in the proud traditions of European art. The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa is now delighted to present “Double Silence,” an exhibition that will see the works of these two artists occupying the same space for the first time. The wave of globalization that gathered momentum from the end of the 20th century began in the west, and proceeded to wash up in various parts of the world, making an impact wherever it broke and simultaneously sucking up myriad things, material and otherwise, as well as people, to form a heaving swell that now covers the entire globe. What we refer to as “contemporary art” shares the same trajectory as this mighty torrent of people, things and ideas. Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent multipolarization of art, the degree to which art possesses the unique qualities of particular regional cultures and histories has been in question. Thirty years on, the art world – caught between globalization and multipolarization – is beginning to reflect less on the importance of cultural differences grounded in locality, than on what our universal human values might actually be. There are a number of possible reasons for this shift, but it could simply be that in the modern world, where the dissemination of information at lightning speed has engendered a kind of global simultaneity, we are now noticing that exploration of universal values is not confined to any specific region. Moreover, COVID-19 has made introspection in the arts a global phenomenon. Following in the footsteps of a European art tradition that has explored universal human values over many centuries, Michaël Borremans and Mark Manders share their own such reflections with those of us inhabiting the same times. The paintings of Borremans, who mines Baroque tradition to portray the dark recesses of the human soul, and sculptures of Manders, with their striking pieces of bodies, created in accordance with the artist’s concept of “self-portrait as a building,” may employ different media, but both delve deeply into complex psychological states and relationships. In “Double Silence,” Borremans and Manders invite the viewer into a space and time in which the artists themselves engage in a dialogue through their works, as the title suggests, amid calm or silence. The word “double” means to be twice as much, twofold, but also has several other meanings, such as two together, distinctly different aspects (eg “dual personality”), and forming a pair. All of which makes the title of this exhibition eminently suitable for a show by two artists who are themselves far from straightforward. We hope you will take the opportunity to visit this exhibition of over eighty sympathetically curated works by two of the top artists in Europe today.
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Aperto 15
TOMIYASU Yuma The Pale Horse
2021.10.30(Sat.) - 2022.3.21(Mon.)
TOMIYASU Yuma (b. 1983) has presented many installations featuring spatial effects that blur distinctions between real and unreal, with themes such as psychic and paranormal phenomena and the world of dreams. The unique world of her work disrupts the perceptions of the viewer, stimulating the senses – including at times the mysterious sixth sense – heightening awareness of the uncertain and invisible that we tend to avoid, and questioning the essence of perceptual experience. Tomiyasu’s new installation created for this exhibition was inspired by a dream she had as a child, and the setting is a hut that appeared in that dream. The horse in the painting hanging on the wall of the hut was inspired by the Pale Horse, ridden by a knight symbolizing Death, in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible. The work beckons the viewer who enters the gallery toward a strange and fantastical experience in which reality and fiction intersect. In recent years, the experientially-based world of the artist’s works, which takes an increasingly dynamic approach to presentation of the traditional medium of painting and incorporation of the spaces it occupies, creates novel opportunities for viewers to encounter what has previously gone unseen. handout
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Aperto 14
HARADA Yuki: Waiting for
2021.6.15(Tue.) - 2021.10.17(Sun.)
Throughout his career Harada Yuki (b. 1989) has dealt in artists and art forms such as Christian Riese Lassen, and ghost photography, which despite occupying a solid position in the visual culture of a particular era, languish on the margins of art history. This solo outing will consist of a video installation incorporating “Waiting for,” Harada’s first new series in two years. In 2017, Harada began collecting photos mainly picked up by junk removal contractors, and subsequently unwanted. 2019’s One Million Seeings shows the artist personally taking in his hand each one of these photos and examining it. This act of casting an eye over images that were once seen by someone, then abandoned, and which will eventually disappear from both memory and history, took a whole twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, the work Waiting for, Harada’s latest offering and first in his “Waiting for” series, uses the CGI (computer-generated imagery) technology employed in the production of open world games to present “scenes from a million years ago/in the future.” In a world created entirely through artificial means, a voice recites the names of all the animals existing on Earth, in a work sure to summon up strong sensations of absence. At first glance contrasting works, both One Million Seeings and Waiting for document humans engaging with vast amounts of information and attempting to incorporate it. The artist refers to this act as “Waiting.” The act of looking at something that once existed, and waiting for something that might visit, could be described as entrusting oneself to the temporal void between before and after an event. In an age when people pick up, and simultaneously let go, enormous volumes of information on a daily basis, “Waiting for” will offer one man’s approach to engaging with the world. handout
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Doug Aitken: i am in you
2021.4.29(Thu.) - 2021.11.23(Tue.)
This exhibition showcases Doug Aitken's i am in you, presented at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa for the first time since its acquisition. Doug Aitken is known for an incredibly diverse body of work ranging from video, photography, sculpture and architectural interventions, to sound, installation, and film offerings. i am in you is a 5-screen video installation. Amid everyday scenes of American suburbia, people, nature, manmade objects, and geometric designs overlap deftly with a young girl's whispering voice, hands clapping in rhythm, and a piano melody, drawing the viewer inexorably into the flow of hallucinatory images on the video. As these images repeat continuously, fragmenting without providing any firm narrative contours, the audience feels the power and speed of this elusive state of flux at a visceral level, experiencing the work as a wandering journey through a vortex of visuals and sound. This is a stunning opportunity to experience first-hand the dynamism of a Doug Aitken video installation in the spacious surroundings of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.
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Kodomochounaikai: playing, learning, connecting through design
2021.4.3(Sat.) - 2022.3.21(Mon.)
Kodomochounaikai Jimukyoku, established in 2014 by architect Shikichi Kaori, is an organization that assembles and runs workshop programs to cultivate the intelligence and sensitivity that enable children to identify issues and solve problems creatively, through design. Kodomochounaikai Jimukyoku provides supervision and support for the activities of children's design teams called called “Kodomochounaikai.” The design activities of these “Kodomochounaikai” ultimately coalesce in the form of a “festival” that connects them to the local community. The children who design the festival get to engage with many other children and, families, and local residents enjoying the festival, and interact with the many friendly adults providing support and watching overseeing their activities. Kodomochounaikai program festivals become places for children to experience a successful realization of ideas, and be part of society. As well as providing an overview of Kodomochounaikai activities since 2014, in a Kanazawa edition of the program, visitors to this exhibition will have the chance to experience the process of design education with children and local residents, and explore the possibilities of design, in the lead-up to a Kodomochounaikai “festival” in Kanazawa.
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Aperto 13
TAKAHASHI Haruki Landscaping
10:00-18:00(until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
What do people think as they walk around a garden? Whether lingering in solitude, or enjoying the surroundings while chatting with a friend or loved one, a garden is generally a place for a change of mood. TAKAHASHI Haruki (b. 1971) creates garden-like settings in museum spaces. A devotion to making installations with a landscape or nature theme brought TAKAHASHI to the idea of the “enrin” as a way of creating a personal, individual connection between viewer and work, rather than shouting loudly at wider society. Enrin (yuanling) is a general term for Chinese gardens, whose structure offers encounters with a series of different landscapes as the viewer strolls around. Each landscape has its own philosophical element, making the garden a condensed version of different scenes from human existence. As a person walks around, their own life is mirrored in their heart, connecting them with the cosmos. The garden created in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, will have water, mountain, light, and darkness. The numerous wild grasses are flora we live alongside. The translucent white porcelain is so fragile it may break on contact, but if handled carefully, will last forever in its current form. Landscapes both robust and fragile are sure to remind the viewer forcefully of the ephemeral nature of life, and the many memories that vanish, only to reappear. Enrin gardens use nature as their material, yet are by no means natural. They are “works” that reflect complex ideas, and are designed with the viewer in mind. TAKAHASHI will consciously move away from a Western art history context to create in the gallery space a garden that reflects the individual spirituality of all those who see it—part of his attempt to explore a more eastern approach to the idea of the installation.
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SATOSHI MURAKAMI Living Migration
2020.10.17(Sat.) - 2021.3.7(Sun.)
Satoshi Murakami (b. 1988) graduated with a degree in architecture from the Musashino Art University in March 2011, the same month as the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit the Tohoku region. The disaster prompted the artist to launch a project titled “Living Migration,” in which he walks around carrying on his back a house he made from styrofoam, changing location continuously. This he has done both in Japan and overseas. The project was sparked by questions Murakami had surrounding the loss of so many people’s homes to the quake and tsunami, the decline of communities after the disaster, and the fact that despite contracting to rent a house just prior to the quake, he and a group of friends were not immediately able to move in. Exploring an everyday existence in which we live to accumulate more money and possessions than we need, and the social conditions and reasons that differentiate public and private spaces, this project considers how the lifestyles of individuals impact on wider society. Joining Living Migration 2015.5–2018.9 acquired by the Museum in 2019, the exhibition will be the first-ever survey of Murakami’s “Living Migration” project in its entirety, from its launch on April 5, 2014 to the present day. The exhibition space, composed of diaries, drawings and photos detailing the people, landscapes and events Murakami met with while traveling with his portable dwelling, and a map showing the route taken by him, gives a sense of actually living the migration alongside the artist, and being right among his thoughts and dilemmas. During the exhibition, the latest work in Murakami’s “Advertising Sign House” project, based on the “Living Migration” project, will be installed in the Museum’s garden. We anticipate that these works employing unique methods to convey the doubt and unease the artist has sensed in society, and offering a place for discussion, will encourage us to confront what it means to live in Japanese society since the Tohoku quake, reawakening our own powers of thought around many related issues.
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Museum of the people, by the people, for the people
2020.7.18(Sat.) - 2021.3.21(Sun.)
In October 2019, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. Located in the heart of the city of Kanazawa, over the past fifteen years the museum has pursued its activities with the goal, among others, of working with local citizens to create a participation-oriented museum that adds vitality to the community. Over time, people have perhaps grown less conscious of the presence of the museum than when it first appeared, looking so fresh and novel. The past fifteen years have also seen some dramatic changes in the museum’s setting, that is, in the city of Kanazawa. In particular, while the museum as a now-popular tourist spot attracts a large number of visitors from out of town and overseas, one suspects the pressure of this relentless tourist tide may have gradually detached it somewhat from the everyday lives of Kanazawa locals. Fifteen years on, this exhibition offers a fresh opportunity for “us” to think about “our museum.” How does a museum conceived with the aim of being created alongside citizens, and revitalizing the community, appear in the eyes of Kanazawa people today? And what vision do they expect it to paint for the future? This exhibition aims to address, from various angles, the idea of “our museum” now. “Museum of the people, by the people, for the people” will be the creation not of artists, but the voices of those same local people, and museum visitors, who take center stage at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. A participatory exhibition, it will invite people to think about what the museum has been so far, and what it could be in the future, via interviews, and a series of seminars for Kanazawa residents. We hope it will encourage those who come to 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and those yet to make its acquaintance, to start thinking of it as “our museum,” and for the museum, for its part, to ponder its future direction by taking on board the views expressed via the exhibition.
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