EXHIBITION
Exhibition
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- Past
Olafur Eliasson "Your chance encounter"
2009.11.21(Sat.) - 2010.3.22(Mon.)
In marking its fifth anniversary, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa will hold a large-scale solo exhibition structured around new works by the Danish/ Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson titled Your chance encounter.” Olafur Eliasson is known for his exploration of the human perception. His works, often using light, shadow, color, fog, wind, waves, and other phenomena of nature as materials, make apparent to the viewer the mechanisms employed in their presentation. Contrary to what might be expected, this enables people to enjoy more purely the act of seeing, as they discover and experience their surroundings. For example, in Your atmospheric colour atlas, 2009, a large gallery is filled with artificially produced fog, imbued with color emanating from fluorescent tubes of red, green and blue. By moving about in the locations where the colors blend, viewers endlessly create their own color spectrum. Based on a profound understanding of SANAA’s design for this museum, both architecturally and functionally, Eliasson boldly engages the factors that constitute 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. In Eye activity line, 2009, 317 canvases of different colors, each about the size of an A5 sheet of paper, are installed on the wall of a long corridor. As our eye follows along the work, which is like a full palette of colors, we are freshly awakened to the character of the space. In such ways, Eliasson explores the Museum’s unique features, displaying works not only in galleries but also in corridors and rest areas, so as to give play to the Museum’s meandering layout and horizontal character, and endeavoring through his artworks to bring interior and exterior into close connection. As they move through the museum building, visitors may be surprised at how Eliasson has transformed the familiar art museum spaces. Eliasson is interested in how 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa—an art museum designed with the functions of a new generation of museums—fulfills a social role as a museum opened to the city. Through this exhibition, he is re-proposing the art museum, not simply as a facility for viewing art in a context removed from society but as a public space having the potential to deeply engage in the society and the urban environment.
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Collection Exhibition "Shift - Field of Fluctuation"
2009.9.12(Sat.) - 2010.4.11(Sun.)
At some odd moment, something happens and suddenly a routinely familiar scene appears like a different world, filled with new meaning. To some extent, we have all experienced this kind of unexpected shift in our perspective or feelings. In contemporary society, overwhelmed by a perpetual flood of things and information, we grow numb in mind and body, and our thinking simply traces the contours of established concepts. What if we should stop, free our thoughts and perceptions, and look freshly at the world now before us and at the events of the past? What if we gave ourselves to the fluctuation and change in our own physical sensations, and to new perceptions and feelings? The works presented in this exhibition work on our sensibilities and promote such a shift in perspective, perceptions, and values. Taking “Shift—Field of Fluctuation” as its keyword, this Collection Exhibition will give play to the unique features of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, which is currently marking its fifth anniversary. In glass-enclosed spaces permitting a soft permeability between interior and exterior—where the everyday and the unusual blend in unexpected ways—the exhibition will blur the outlines of things, including our own.
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- Past
Knit Cafe in my Room by Mitsuharu Hirose and Minako Nishiyama
2009.4.29(Wed.) - 2010.3.22(Mon.)
A tireless proponent of the knitting world, Mitsuharu HIROSE produces highly original knit pieces that display his superb technique. Minako NISHIYAMA pursues an “admirable” or “ideal” world for both the individual and the community through her own free-form language. Here in collaboration, they produce in the exhibition space “Knit Cafe in my Room”, a platform for various knitting projects aimed at aficionados. Through this long-term project, the significance and possibilities of knitting and creativity are explored.
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