EXHIBITION
Exhibition
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- Current
de-sport: The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Sports through Art
2020.6.27(Sat.) - 2020.9.27(Sun.)
In anticipation of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games next year, this exhibition sets out to reexamine the significance of sports from an artistic perspective. The title, de-sport, is a newly coined term derived from the medieval French word desport, meaning “to enjoy,” and the idea of dismantling and rebuilding sports, expressed by the phrase “deconstructed sport.”* In tracing the etymology of the word “sport,” one finds that it originally meant “an enjoyable diversion from routine labor,” and included artistic pursuits such as music, theatre, painting, and dance. In contrast to contemporary sports – a parade of consummate physiques and skills, and a commodification of competition as entertainment – this exhibition returns to the roots of sports and adopts an artistic viewpoint in order to reconsider these activities as social constructs that reflect various issues of the day, including play, the body, the state, war, and non-verbal communication. Don’t miss this chance to watch and experience sports, deconstructed and reconstructed from the artistic perspectives of ten artists from nine countries around the globe. *The exhibition title was inspired by Eugene Kangawa’s solo exhibition “supervision / Desport.” ●List of works / description
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Rei Naito: Mirror Creation
2020.6.27(Sat.) - 2020.8.23(Sun.)
Stretches of earth extend in places where tiny people stand and water falls, swaying threads and ribbons spawn breezes, beads and glass invite the light inside. While engaging in a dialogue with space, Rei Naito combines natural elements with delicate motifs, and layers faint colors on canvas to evoke primordial scenes of life. In this solo exhibition, Naito, an artist who has consistently endeavored to “transcend what people (I) make,” deals with “creation” for the first time. Naito suggests that this will be an act of becoming a person while acknowledging the fact that people are the main constituent in creation. This process involves moving back and forth between human beings and nature, you and I, life and death, inside and outside, and people and art as well as copying, reflecting, and altering these things. In developing a sense of unity with the anima and compassion that emerges from these mirrored images, a moment of creation arises as one attempts to face life. The exhibition venue will consist of galleries of various sizes, light courts, and the spaces created by the corridors that connect them. In the daytime, natural light, varying according to the weather and time, will fill the spaces. After the evening, the works will be illuminated. There, visitors will find creations made by the artist, some very small, and each person’s perceptions will be freed by the sense of resonance with the act of human creation that they see and feel. Visitors can move back and forth between the corridors and the galleries, and in and outside of life. And as they repeatedly see and are seen, they are certain to grasp a vision of life.
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- Upcoming
Michaël Borremans Mark Manders Double Silence
2020.9.19(Sat.) - 2021.2.28(Sun.)
A painter in the Western tradition of Manet and Velázquez among others, Michaël Borremans (born 1963 in Geraardsbergen, Belgium; lives in Ghent) is known for works that capitalize on superb draftsmanship to reflect the invisible shadows of human existence. Since coming up with the idea of “Self-portrait as a building,” Mark Manders (born 1968 in Volkel, The Netherlands; lives in Ronse, Belgium) has been combining sculptures, pieces of furniture, and objects reminiscent of everyday household items and building materials, and presenting the results as sculptures and installations. In this first pairing by any museum of work by Manders and Borremans, paintings, sculptures and works on video will entwine in the gallery as if in conversation, creating new narratives.
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Aperto 12
ANZAI Tsuyoshi Poly-
2020.6.27(Sat.) - 2020.11.23(Mon.)
ANZAI Tsuyoshi (born in 1987) uses everyday objects as his primary medium, above all cheap plastic products consumed everywhere around the world. Removing their original function and meaning, he displays the plastic items as objects and compels us to question our interpretations of them and relationship with them. Everyday objects that move in unexpected ways, sculptures created from plastic packaging normally tossed in the rubbish, and drawings that trace the outlines of plastic fragments... Anzai’s works, colorful and interesting to look at, strike us somehow like an extension of children’s play. Yet, to see familiar objects engaging in unfamiliar behavior evokes an eerie sense of disorientation. The exhibition’s title “Poly-” derives from a prefix used in the names of several materials generically referred to as plastic: polyethylene, polystyrene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, and so on. Besides meaning “many” and “multi-,” the prefix also indicates a condition of chemical molecules transformed (polymerized) into large single chain-like molecules. We may be aware such materials derive from crude oil, but most of us simply call them all “plastic” and use them every day without really understanding how they are made or the differences among them. Today, while their volumes of consumption and methods of disposal pose grave problems in the world, plastics are so much a part of everyday life we can hardly imagine living without them. Anzai speaks of our relationship with plastic as marked by “a strange close-yet-far distance.” This exhibition will examine the uncertainty and incomprehensibility of society around us.
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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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