EXHIBITION
Exhibition2023
-
- Current
Collection Exhibition 2：Electricity-Sound
2023.11.18(Sat.) - 2024.5.12(Sun.)
Today, we live with all kinds of sounds, from natural environmental sounds to man-made electronic ones. Sound has the power to connect us to the world not only through the mere act of hearing/listening, but also through our bodily senses. In the museum’s collection, works with a deep relationship to sound are inseparable from electricity, which is both a natural phenomenon and an element of energy. This is because electricity is essential to the recording and reproduction of sound. Therefore, this exhibition will focus on both sound and electricity and the relationship between them, and train our ear, so to speak, to the electrical connections that emanate from these works. The exhibition will also explore trends in art where invisible sounds have been transformed into traces, drawings, electrical signals, and data. The process of giving form to sound and the methodologies by which it is transformed are closely related to the evolution of sound reproduction technologies such as recorders and players, and their development promises to highlight issues related to contemporary ar t in general, such as recording and reproduction, and preservation and restoration. Through these themes, this exhibition introduces works from the collection that are not merely sound art, but also relate to a wide range of fields such as science and philosophy, and which unfold visually and acoustically. Takagi Yuu (Assistant Curator)
… -
- Past
That Which Bears the Supreme Name of Chocolate
2023.10.28(Sat.) - 2023.11.3(Fri.)
Event Overview Although Kanazawans are often thought to have a fondness for tea ceremony and Japanese sweets, the rate of chocolate consumption in the city is among the highest in Japan. In recent years, due in part to the emergence of young chocolatiers who are producing highly distinctive chocolate, Kanazawa’s food culture has assumed even greater depth. Through displays of crafts related to chocolate, a food that is beloved by people throughout the world, curator-guided gallery tours with sign-language interpretation, and other events, this exhibition, That Which Bears the Supreme Name of Chocolate, conveys the charms of Kanazawa, the Town of Chocolate. Exhibition Summary The scientific name for the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao (named by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus) is derived from a Greek word meaning “food of the gods.” Cacao, which originated in the highlands of Central and South America, can be traced back to the Mayans, who flourished in Guatemala prior to the Common Era, and the Aztecs, who inhabited what is today Mexico. Cacao was so valuable that it boosted the status of money. Later, in the 17th century during the Age of Exploration, cacao was introduced to Europe by the Spanish, and gradually took hold as a luxury item and nutritional drink among court nobles and the social elite. Cacao was combined with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and other ingredients to make chocolate, which came to be seen as a nec plus ultra (“nothing further beyond”). This led to greater availability, from the upper classes to common people, and in the modern era, chocolate grew even more widespread, making it a beloved food among people all over the world. In this exhibition, we examine the introduction of cacao as seen in rare books and documents from Japanese collections, and while tracing the history and culture of the seed’s acceptance, we also showcase works of contemporary art related to chocolate and crafts that bear a resemble to chocolate. We are also pleased to present the works of Stéphane Leroux, who uses unique techniques to incorporate chocolate into his artistic creations, for the first time in Kanazawa. Chocolate is available in a diverse array of types, enabling us to choose the variety we want based on our individual taste. It is a valued gift that brings joy both to the giver and to the receiver. Chocolate provides us with an opportunity to give something special and also to take part in a form of contemporary gift giving. Kurosawa Hiromi Chief Curator The 38th National Cultural Festival The 23rd National Art and Cultural Festival for Persons with Disabilities Ishikawa Hyakumangoku Cultural Festival 2023 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa Special Exhibition
… -
- Current
DXP (Digital Transformation Planet): Towards the Next Interface
2023.10.7(Sat.) - 2024.3.17(Sun.)
Eating the digital!? Technology that integrates with the body How will digital technology change our way of life and sensibilities? This question has been asked repeatedly since the 20th century. In 2023, we may answer this question: a completely different planet is about to emerge. On this planet which has entered the Anthropocene, we are immersed in an invisible network. Our lives are partly (and getting more and more) controlled by AI, and the relationship between technology and life is being generated anew every day. DXP is an exhibition/interface that brings together artists, architects, scientists, programmers, and others to capture this transformation across disciplines, understand what is happening now, and propose it as something that can be sensed. The contemporary realities of AI, metaverse, and big data are the technologies of the moment. DXP is a vision of the future that follows it, explores the possibility of a comprehensive way of life that includes food, clothes, and habitation. Yuko Hasegawa, Yuu Takagi, Mio Harada, Yishu Hang, Jin Motohashi
… -
- Past
Alex Da Corte Fresh Hell
2023.4.29(Sat.) - 2023.9.18(Mon.)
Today, life’s every nook and cranny is saturated with visually appealing images. Creators and inventors are constantly thinking about what kinds of images operate on the human psyche and how to visualize the things that normally go unseen: emotions, time, and space. Alex Da Corte is an artist known for works that play with objects and icons that feel familiar to him, deconstructing and reconstructing their original meanings. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including popular and consumer culture, art history and design, sampling the visual culture of America through a variety of media including video, sculpture, painting, and installation. In all of his methods, Da Corte’s attention to vivid color and form is evident, and familiar motifs become dense, graceful assemblages thanks to his extensive knowledge of art history and his subtle and distinctive sensibility. While these works have an allure that draws people in, they also appeal to inexpressible human emotions such as loneliness and anxiety, making people dance in a strange, delusional world outside of the realm of rational organization. This is the first exhibition for Alex Da Corte at an art museum in Asia, and will feature a total of 11 video installations and other works, including recent and never-before-seen pieces. The varied images projected on an overwhelmingly large box-shaped screen frequently appear light, coquettish, and funny, but they also possess a consistently mysterious appeal that plays havoc with one’s mind the more deeply one engages with them. “Fresh Hell” also ventures into the relationship between desire, memory, and perception that has come to define consumer culture in a contemporary society faced with an onslaught of visual information, confronting us with the question of what this inundation of images brings about.
… -
- Past
Collection Exhibition 1 It knows : When Forms Become Mind
2023.4.8(Sat.) - 2023.11.5(Sun.)
As a universal theme relating to our ability to perceive and interpret the world, the relationship between form and mind has been explored in art since ancient times. Gregory Bateson, the multidisciplinary scientist who continuously explored the ecology of mind and nature, described a “mind” as a large network that makes connections among interrelated forms and shapes and their respective patterns. Visible and invisible patterns of various kinds – natural, social, verbal, subconscious – arise everywhere in the world. In the course of daily life, we get a sense of mental systems greater than the individual mind, emerging naturally from relationships among forms and typologies. These patterns and structures are part of a larger network of exchanges and connections that underpin the earth and its ecosystem, and serve as the background for the way we interpret and interact with the world. Art, the history of which is still ongoing, engages with this grand theme by exploring how shapes and patterns shape our perception and understanding of the world, and how they connect to what we might call “mind.” By juxtaposing works from the museum’s diverse collection of painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation from the 1960s to the present day with works by artists invited for this exhibition, this show takes viewers on a journey through the process of the mind that grasps relationships among diverse forms.
… -
- Past
Collection Exhibition 2 Sea Lane – Connecting to the Islands
2022.11.3(Thu.) - 2023.3.19(Sun.)
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Okinawa’s reversion from the U.S. to Japan, it is with great pleasure that we present Sea Lane - Connecting to the Islands, an exhibition focusing on the characteristically insular nature of the Okinawa region in which we examine contemporary art of the Ryukyu Islands as well as the works of artists from Southeast Asia and Oceania – areas that have historically interacted with Okinawa via the sea. Since ancient times, the sea has been a “wall” that separated one island and the next while also being a “road” between them. At one time, the Ryukyu Kingdom engaged in trade with regions such as present-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, making it a waypoint for the flow of civilization and a meeting place for a variety of people and goods. In tracing the marine history of Okinawa and surrounding countries, we find that the islands engaged in abundant exchanges with these regions while on occasion coming up against harsh conditions. The more people moved around, the more apparent the linguistic, ethnic, ancestral, cultural, sexual, and philosophical differences between them became. Under these circumstances, artists took a hard look at the realities they saw and responded accordingly. In this exhibition, we present works by seven artists from the museum collection and three others who were invited to participate in this project. These contemporary expressions are rooted both in the unique culture of Okinawa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, and the irrefutable history of the region. Moreover, the works urge us to consider the diversity that has emerged from the islands, the influence of other regions based on the historical context of the sea, and the relationship between the islands, separated as they are by water, and the people who inhabit them. ●List of works / description
… -
- Past
The Timeless Imagination of Yves Klein: Uncertainty and the Immateriality
2022.10.1(Sat.) - 2023.3.5(Sun.)
Yves Klein is known as the artist of the blue, well known for his deep and vivid renderings of this color that seem to pull the viewer into it: International Klein Blue (IKB). He emerged from the tabula rasa [blank slate] of the devastated postwar period as an artist in search of a new humanity like some sort of comet. When Klein was 20 years old, he spent time on the beach in Nice with the poet Claude Pascal and the sculptor Arman, and the three of them came up with the idea of “dividing the world.” Klein wanted the blue sky, and the episode where he was said to have claimed the sky and its infinite expanse as a work of art by signing his name across it demonstrates his interest in immateriality, the freedom of the spirit, leaping into space, and a cosmic imagination. Through his actions and performances, Klein used colors such as blue, which he considered to be the most immaterial and spiritual, fire, water, and air, so that art could be experienced through sensibility, rather than being perceived just as a material object. As a young man, Klein came to Japan and earned a black belt in judo, and is known for his exploration of the relationship between the spirit and the body. During the same period, the Italian Spatialism movement, Zero from Germany, and Gutai in Japan gained momentum with their experimental attempts at art that rose from the ruins, reexamining the relationship between the human body, material, and space from scratch. This exhibition, centered on Yves Klein while also including artists from these movements that were active around the same period as well as contemporary artists, will highlight the theme of immateriality that is common to their art. Amid the current confusion caused by a myriad of unseen things, such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the information environment of the internet, we find ourselves in a state of uncertainty where the substance of things remains opaque to us. As such, Klein’s explorations of a sensibility and spirituality produced by immateriality inspires the creation of contemporary artists, including those of the post-internet generation. This exhibition promises to give us a sense of joy and the strength to feel and imagine that which is not here and now, and to overcome the uncertain present.
… -
- Current
Special Exhibition
Ryoji Ikeda
2023.11.18(Sat.) - 2024.5.12(Sun.)
The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa will present a special exhibition of Ryoji Ikeda in conjunction with this year’s theme, “Art x New Technology.” Ryoji Ikeda is an internationally acclaimed artist and composer whose diverse range of activities include immersive concerts and installations based on meticulous research, as well as performing arts and public art. Since the early 2000s, Ikeda has been exploring forms of artistic expression that seek to perceive the world from new perspectives, by working with big data in the natural sciences in creative ways. At this exhibition, Ikeda presents the new installation data.gram [n°6], consisting of 23 video works, some of which have never been exhibited before. “data.gram” is a new series that recomposes Ikeda’s large-scale audiovisual installation, the “data-verse” trilogy (2019-2020), from the ultramicroscopic world of invisible elementary particles to the ultramacroscopic world lying at the very end of the observable universe, in an attempt to explore the various scales found in the natural world. This new work will provide an opportunity to test our own perception and awareness of the harmony and chaos of the natural world.
… -
- Past
Rhizomatiks Kanazawa Radiance View
2023.10.14(Sat.) - 2023.11.26(Sun.)
How will society, our lives, and the future develop as a result of DX technology? Digital images that weave together the details and scenery of Kanazawa, both old and new, and connect them to each other as a new vision of a futuristic city welcomes visitors at the entrance to the museum.Data pertaining to various Kanazawa landmarks photographed in three dimensions will be sublimated into new images using state-of-the-art image processing technology. These images will be fused with original music by Daito Manabe and Nosaj Thing to forge a kind of artistic expression that has never been seen before.
… -
- Past
Collection Special Exhibition + Communication Program
NARA Yoshitomo ―Dog-o-rama
2023.4.29(Sat.) - 2023.9.18(Mon.)
This exhibition presents Yoshitomo Nara’s Dog-o-rama, Lonely Moon/Voyage of the Moon, and a group of drawings on display for the first time since their acquisition. All of these works were created as part of Nara’s exhibition “Moonlight Serenade” (2006-2007), which was conceived on the premise of the museum’s “open” function. Dog-o-rama is a project-type work created by a dog, an important motif for Nara. It consists of Pup Patrol, a project that expands the world of the museum as children in dog costumes tour the museum, and Pup Up the Dog, which completes the giant 7-meter-long stuffed animal, Pup King, filled with old clothes and other fabrics brought in by people. Dog-o-rama will provide visitors with an opportunity to participate in the work and experience the world of Nara’s artworks within the entire space, including drawings and plate paintings, as well as to reconsider how one might appreciate artworks in museums through the activities of children dressed as dogs.
… -
- Past
Shell of Phantom Light
2023.4.8(Sat.) - 2023.9.18(Mon.)
Using the raden (mother-of-pearl inlay) technique, the craft artist IKEDA Terumasa (1987-) depicts insubstantial objects such as data and electrical signals, as well as imaginary animals. Numbers fall down like rain, and patterns resembling electronic circuits exhibit movement depending on the angle. The iridescent light of the shells represents the electric current and data that underlie human life today. A conch features long water-tube grooves like a bone shell, while a dragonfly has five pairs of wings. The mother-of-pearl inlay decoration on the surface imparts the sublimity of the idol to these fictional forms. Ikeda’s act of creation is akin to a “Shin,” a mythical shell-like creature in folklore embodying a landscape that does not exist in this world by spitting out mirages. This exhibition presents a total of 14 works from the first 10 years of Ikeda’s creative practice, divided into two phases. The exhibition venue, which brings together his own collection and works, including biological and mineral specimens as well as toys and books, allows visitors a glimpse into Ikeda’s “Natural History,” as well as an intuitive experience of the genealogy of his outlandish forms. In order to express his exquisite worldview in the form of minute vessels, Ikeda introduced new technologies such as a cutting machine for the production of the base material, and a pulsed laser for the cutting out of the mother-of-pearl inlay chips, while continuing to use traditional lacquer techniques. Each step in the production process and the production of raden obi, the result of a collaboration with the textile industry, are introduced through videos.
… -
- Past
Aperto 18 GU Kenryou Intervals of the afterimage
2023.4.8(Sat.) - 2023.9.18(Mon.)
GU Kenryou employs an original technique known as “digital weaving,” in which multiple photographs are woven together at a pixel level to create photographic works with a textural quality resembling fabric, expressing the latent context underlying the images. This exhibition will feature a new series of large-scale photographs taken with a high-resolution camera in forests around the world, including the primeval forests of Fujian Province in China. As a result of their size, the images as a whole are not compressed or reduced to the framework of “flatness,” but rather trigger active movement of the viewer’s eye, evoking the sense of awe experienced and the ghostly murmurs heard in the shadows of a forest. Meanwhile, the artist’s distinctive method of weaving multiple images together manually in repeating rows and columns of pixels, one by one, generates fluctuations on an unconscious level that transcend the artist’s intentions, confining the natural spatial and temporal scale of the earth within the works in a complex fashion. Gu’s art stimulates our common planetary memory, and by imprinting the multi-temporal, multi-lingual, and multi-locational nature of the forest on our minds like an afterimage, brings about changes in the sensibilities of the contemporary viewer paralyzed by an accelerating deluge of visual information.
… -
- Past
lab.5 ROUTINE RECORDS
2022.10.1(Sat.) - 2023.3.21(Tue.)
This exhibition, the fifth in the lab. (short for “laboratory”) series, which was launched in 2017, not only makes use of the museum’s Design Gallery as a display venue, but it also focuses on the production process by turning the space into a site for investigative research and experimentation. In this edition, we introduce a new project called ROUTINE RECORDS by the spirited experimental welfare unit HERALBONY, which in recent years has explored the potential for welfare and art across a host of disciplines. In this project, the unit carefully developed sounds that were derived from the habitually repeated, everyday actions (routines) of people with intellectual disabilities, who attend special needs schools and welfare facilities in Kanazawa or other areas, and turned them into music. The venue a corner where visitors can listen to individual sounds, experimental compositions made by professional musicians out of routine sounds, and a DJ booth, where visitors can remix the sounds made by these routines and use them to create new music. This allows them to experience the creative process of turning the sounds they hear into music from a variety of different angles. The exhibition provides participants with the opportunity to develop a deeper awareness and sensitivity toward people from a wide range of backgrounds.
… -
- Past
APERTO 17
SCAN THE WORLD [NEW GAME]
2022.10.1(Sat.) - 2023.3.19(Sun.)
SCAN THE WORLD (STW) is a project to scan the city with portable handy-scanners, led by artists ISHIGE Kenta (born in Tokyo, 1994) and BIEN (born in Tokyo, 1993). STW is at once an ongoing street practice and a new form of play, in which anyone can participate. In [NEW GAME], the long-term project room at the museum will be transformed into a meeting place for people to participate in STW. An enormous stone tablet floats in the gallery inscribed with the rules for the project, like an artifact unearthed from an ancient site. Appearing as if providing an analysis and research on this tablet, the exhibition presents STW’s activities up until now, as well as its plans for the future with prospective participants. STW will provide a unique website as an integral part of the exhibition, a platform to connect the different practice of play through past and future. Here, anyone can upload and view the visual data of textures collected in various cities. Places and people from all over the world will be connected through images and the act of playing. Throughout the six-month exhibition, ISHIGE Kenta and BIEN will stay in Kanazawa, inviting people to participate. STW will be open to the city with the museum as the starting point, and it will continue to evolve as an ongoing form of play on the street with expanding players. scan-the-world.net 2022- In Cooperation with: Konel inc. Design: NUMATA Sou
…