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An exhibition displaying some 60 works of painting and sculpture from London’s Courtauld Gallery boasting one of the world’s great collections of Impressionist and Post-impressionist art. The exhibition will bring the artworks to life for viewers with explanation of the artist’s methods as revealed by the artist’s words, circumstances surrounding the works, and scientific investigation.
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One of Denmark’s most celebrated painters, Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) painted close acquaintances, landscapes, and subdued interiors. This exhibition will be the first comprehensive survey in Japan of Hammershøi and the masters of Danish modern art. Besides works by Hammershøi, visitors can look forward to seeing many of the finest paintings by his contemporaries.
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The third exhibition of the Ueno Artist Project, which showcases select artists now working in art groups, will take the theme "Children," a attractive motif that has long fascinated artists. The exhibition will explore a range of images held of children.
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This project, operated in conjunction with Tokyo University of the Arts, is aimed at fostering an active, open art community with the Museum as a central stage. The project is led by art communicators (“Tobira”), who are given responsibility for growing a community.
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A program linking all 9 cultural facilities in Ueno Park to support children in their "museum debut." The program provides a "flat" learning environment where adults and children learn on an equal basis. Through experiences of seeing, listening, and speaking, children come to understand the fun and excitement of visiting an art museum.
Untitled 2009-02
oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Works of the cushion and bedding series Yasuko Iba launched in 2003. Standing before an Iba cushion depicted on a large canvas, you may feel as if enveloped by brilliant light. According to the artist, the surface of an object spawns a place where visual “texture” manifests. The cushion embroidery takes on the illusion of a decoration, lying flat on the picture, and floats out from the canvas. It is a depiction confounding the viewer’s eye, and through it, the artist gives prominence to invisible “texture”—light reflecting from the cushion and air surrounding it.
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Untitled 2015-01
oil on canvas, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of MA2 Gallery
Because Iba depicts her paintings carefully on the basis of a photograph, their character as a reproduction often commands undue attention. In response, Iba has come to emphasize the “materiality” of her painting materials by using thin, high-oil content paint. In this way, she draws the viewer’s attention to her painting’s character as an illusion on the flat plane of a canvas. This painting dates from when she shifted from her vessel series to her acrylic box series. A space is created in which multiple motifs resonate within light and air.
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Untitled 2018-02
oil on canvas, Collection of the artist, Courtesy of MA2 Gallery, Photo: Keizo Kioku
In 2016, Iba began placing her motif inside an acrylic box. Light reflects on the transparent box and captures aspects of the surrounding scenery. For this exhibition, she also shot photographs at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and painted works on their basis. In the period when these paintings were done, she came to softly meld the foreground reflected scenery with the scenery beyond, appearing through the box. Iba, by adjusting the point of focus and blurring other scenery to a degree, smoothly connects layers in a complex space.
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Untitled 2018-01
oil on canvas, eN arts collection, Photo: Takemi Art Photos
A series examining pale light within darkness. What distinguishes this series, besides its restrained coloring, are veil-like transparent bands of color. The bands partially obscure the vessel or bottle, thereby directing our eye into depth and making us aware of the profound depth of the painting’s world. At the same time, the veil, positioned so close in the foreground as to appear pasted on the canvas, makes us strongly aware of the flatness of the painting. These contradictory illusions quietly conflict, producing a comfortable tension amid our commuting between them.
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grain #2018-2
silkscreen on paper, Courtesy of Gallery Nomart
Iba’s first new print series since 2004. As their title “Grain” implies, the works display a landscape formed of color grains, our impression of which changes depending on our distance from it. Because the ink grains are combinations of complementary colors, when we stand back the landscape changes to softly transparent monochrome scenery. By breaking the scenery down into grains and reconstructing it, Iba expresses the thickness of light and atmosphere permeating the scenery. Also displayed, print works based on photographs of a jungle gym and greenhouse.
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depth #2019
(Preview at Gallery Nomart)
2019
© Takuma Uematsu
A new video work—Iba’s first effort in this medium—will be displayed. On one screen is a video animated by countless moving grains, produced using stereopsis (the perception of 3D depth by combining the views of both eyes). On the other—a video using a monochrome depth map to represent depth born from the process of stereoscopic video production.
Iba’s video work stimulates our memory of scenes viewed and light experienced sometime, somewhere. The large screen occupies our field of vision, producing a strange sensation as if we were plunged into our own interior or depths of memory.
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