November 16 (Thu), 2023 – January 8 (Mon-holiday), 2024
This exhibition features six artists who have devoted themselves to “picturing and touching” living beings existing in nature other than humans.
Plants and animals are enormously popular motifs for creative and expressive activities. This time, however, we examine artists who form inseparable relationships with a particular variety of living being, whom they observe and depict for decades with unwavering passion.
A fascination with wild mushrooms, sparked by a coincidental encounter, has led KOBAYASHI Michiko to seek them out and record them in diverse habitats. TSUJI Hisashi, loving wildflowers in his youth, painted and recorded them untiringly in private life while active on the Japanese art scene in the first half of the 20th century. UCHIYAMA Haruo, using the skills he mastered as a wood inlay craftsman, pioneered the bird-carving world in Japan.
After bursting on the postwar scene with a poetic, experimental style, photographer IMAI Hisae devoted the remainder of her life to photographing thoroughbreds. TOMITA Miho, charmed by the pasture cows she encountered as a university student, has since created wood-block prints of cows while working with them on a dairy farm. ABE Chisato, traveling the world in search of gorillas in zoos and in the wild, has established emotional bonds with them while painting and recorded them.
In each case, what has seized the artist’s eye in his or her keen pursuit of a single subject in order to photograph, paint, or model it? This exhibition looks at the varying forms of interaction with other lives that unfold within the artists’ endeavor to “picture and touch” them and ponders our future as humans living together with other living beings.
To enable people who are blind or have low vision to enjoy the exhibition, we include touch tools and artworks that can be experienced through handling.
※ The “Ueno Artist Project” exhibition series showcases artists active in Public Entry Exhibitions (Koboten), under a particular theme each time. It has been held annually since 2017 in order to continue and build on the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum's history as “the home of the Public Entry Exhibition.”