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I LOVE ART 17Play Play Art

⟨Artists from our Collection⟩

Chuta Ito / Alexander Rodchenko / Buckminster Fuller / René Magritte / Diane Arbus / Andy Warhol / Sol Lewitt / Niki de Saint‐Phalle / Duane Michals / Nam June Paik / Yoko Ono / David Hockney / Joel-Peter Witkin / Sadaharu Horio / Jonathan Borofsky / David Hammons / Fabrice Hyber / Olaf Nicolai / Tsuyoshi Ozawa

⟨Invited Artist⟩

Motohiko Odani

EXHIBITION

Here you witness an angel standing on a wave right now, facing the wind.
The 6 meter heigh angel is titled Surf Angel (Provisional Monument 2), created by Motohiko Odani for the Reborn Art Festival 2021-22, an art festival in Ishinomaki city.
Nam June Paik’s Robot K-567 greets the angel. She is a daughter of Robot K-456, the world’s first art robot created by Paik in 1964. Fabrice Hyber’s L’Homme de Bessines is sprinkling water through the 11 holes on his body. Since his birth in a French village Bessines in 1991, this fountain, like a future human being or an extraterrestrial, has blended into its surroundings, and now has over 100 clones and copies spread around the world.

If you stand in this playground of art, you will encounter unknown messages.
If you talk with art, at that moment, art will be involved in your life and reality.

“An angel with a geometric form makaba head, which represents a vehicle to another world or dimension, wears the same clothing as the statue of Nike of Samothrace. Perhaps balancing, perhaps floating, this defenseless figure with its arms spread wide in crisscrossing direction embodies many semiotic layers.”
• Motohiko Odani, from his text for the work, 2022

This exhibition titled as Play Play Art features around 150 works by 19 artists from our collection and Motohiko Odani as a guest, exhibited as landscapes and people in a park from Agora to Ueno Park.

“After all, human activity is about how to expand and flow while minimizing energy.
The nomadic tribes knew it as a typical example. Another word for this is play. This is the biggest problem for the next generation.”
• Nam June Paik, from conversation with Seigo Matsuoka (Seigo Matsuoka , “Story of Excursion,” Kousakusha)

This exhibition may be a playground of art for you to discover the angels that have suddenly landed on the earth.

WORKS

PROFILE

Chuta Ito
1867-1954 Japan

Architect and architectural historian. He established a field of Japanese architectural history. He traveled alone to China, India, Turkey, and the Middle East and developed the system of Eastern Architecture. He designed the Tsukiji Honganji Temple (1934) using his original theory of architectural evolution.

Alexander Rodchenko
1891-1956 Russia

One of the founders of the artistic movement Russian Constructivism. He continued innovative experiment in the realm of painting, photography, and design, leaving extraordinary marks in the 20th century avant-garde art.

Buckminster Fuller
1895-1983 United States of America

He continued to pursue the issue of how to make the world work, through his writing Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963) and works such as the Dymaxion Map and the Geodesic Dome.

René Magritte
1898-1967 Belgium

Describing his own work as Thought Rendered Visible, he pursued the problem of Words and Images. His work has had a profound influence on 20th century culture, including art, thought, design, and advertising.

Diane Arbus
1923-1971 United States of America

She expressed the dark side of American society through portraits of the people who have been pushed to the margins of society such as transgenders, freak show performers, people with physical and mental disabilities.

Andy Warhol
1928-1987 United States of America

From the 1950s, while creating commercial illustrations, he experimented on Pop Art works and gained overwhelming following for his works on pop culture icons.

Sol Lewitt
1928-2007 United States of America

He pioneered Minimal Art and Conceptual Art with his geometric three-dimensional compositions of pyramids, grids, colors, and lines without emotion or expression.

Niki de Saint-Phalle
1930-2002 France

After suffered a nervous breakdown, she started painting and began her performance of Shooting Paintings. Later she continued creating works themed on women such as the “Nana” sculpture series.

Duane Michals
1932- United States of America

Photographs scenes he has staged himself in his home and other everyday spaces as if they were supernatural phenomena or scenes from a dream by using multiple exposures and extensive use of blurring.

Nam June Paik
1932-2006 Korea / United States of America

He founded Media Art, the first to incorporate TV, video and other media into art. His works combines technology and Eastern thought.

Yoko Ono
1933- Japan

She actively developed a series of Action Art by words of Instruction, as well as performance and sculptures.

David Hockney
1937- Britain

His pop and figurative works have gained wide popularity, ranging from the flat and graphical photographs of the late 1950s to the transparent and colorful works of the West Coast period.

Joel-Peter Witkin
1939- United States of America

With a unique aesthetic sense, he creates a mythical world and photographs it, using as his subjects transsexuals undergoing surgery, dead fetuses, women with deformed limbs, unusually obese women, and corpses undergoing autopsy.

Sadaharu Horio
1939- Japan

A member of the Gutai Art Association (dissolved in 1972), which led the Japanese postwar avant-garde art movement. Since the 1960s he had been working to incorporate art into everyday life through performances and works using everyday waste materials such as cloth, stones, and lumber.

Jonathan Borofsky
1942- United States of America

While pretending to be comical and unreal, his works condense and submerge social issues and human propositions.

David Hammons
1943- United States of America

His work Chasing the Blue Train (1990), in which a toy train runs between a grand piano and coal, was a powerful expression of black society and jazz, and made him one of the leading artists of late 20th century America.

Fabrice Hyber
1961- France

Many of his works are paintings and interactive and audience-participatory projects, and have greatly influenced subsequent artists.

Olaf Nicolai
1962- Germany

After studying literature, philosophy, and semiotics, he began his artistic career with collecting as his main concept.

Tsuyoshi Ozawa
1965- Japan

He began the Jizoing project since he was a student at the Tokyo University of the Arts. From around 1993, he began the Nasubi Gallery, as well as Sodan Art (Consultation Art) in which he creates artworks while consulting with participants.

Motohiko Odani
1972- Japan

He conducts research and practice to deconstruct the genre of Japanese sculpture, which has developed in its own unique way through Japanese Buddhist sculpture and modern sculpture.

Past exhibitions