21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, kanazawa

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.”

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.

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.

In the same painting, Nishimura Yu (1982-) complexly overlays different scenes or actions catching his eye—fragments of “fulfilling hours enjoyed in daily life”—and composes them in a landscape. The resulting blurry picture evokes a place seemingly far removed from reality and pulls the viewer into the depicted scene.

The many art styles coming out of Asia, intimately related to their particular vernacular history and culture, intently explore the interval between tradition and rapid globalization, working trial and error. This exhibition presents works, trained by the waves of post-industrialization and technological change, that ask the universal question, “Where is humanity headed?” These works, which illuminate our changing society from Artists based their activities in Asian, vernacular culture, are presented under the theme, “Asian Landscapes.”
Then, this time’s small special exhibition, “Makurihirogeru”—the fifth (and final) investigative-research exhibition devoted to Awazu Kiyoshi, displays pasteup originals of Awazu print works. Through them, it examines Awazu’s thinking as a creator who continually asked “What is design”? and never relinquished his focus on “reproduction.”