ARTS/FILM

Trans-Cool TOKYO
Contemporary Japanese Art from MOT Collection

Synopsis
Main artists
Exhibition photograph
Contact

Synopsis

The exhibition consists of 44 works selected from the 4,000 piece-collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT Collection). From Yayoi Kusama's pioneering works of Japanese Pop Art to Yasumasa Morimura's role-playing in multiple identity-expressing portraits from the 1980s, the exhibition provides an opportunity to review works by these groundbreaking artists yielding a context for examining how Japanese artists have established their own creative identities within the context of pop culture since the second half of the 1990s.

The main thrust of the exhibition focuses on the work of artists from Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara's generation or younger, emerging in the 1990s. Using various styles, the works are characterized by their attempts to express the instabilities evident in contemporary notions of identity and relationships, which have arisen from the onset of the information age and the greater freedoms and uncertainties that mature capitalism and its allowance of diverse value systems have occasioned

This exhibition reveals a particular attitude palpable in these young creators from Tokyo ? maintaining a degree of skepticism while interpreting and changing the present age through the medium of its pop culture. The exhibition title, “Trans-Cool” means “Beyond being cool”, indicating that Tokyo offers an overture of the urban culture of Asia, which is a new type of “Cool,” to the world. It is the organizer's hope that, through contemporary art, this exhibition will reach beyond Tokyo to contribute to the process of forming identities and fostering communication throughout Asia.

Schedule

Friday, February 26, 2010 ～ Sunday, March 28, 2010

Venue

Bangkok Art and Culture Centre
（939/9 Rama I Rd. Wangmai, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330）
http://www.bacc.or.th/

Organizers

Tokyo Metropolitan Government/ Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Culture Creation Project Office (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)

Co-organize

Ministry of Culture, THAILAND/
Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

Support

Embassy of Japan in Thailand

Number of art works exhibited: Total of 44 pieces from collection and deposited works of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

NAWA Kohei
PixCell-Deer#17, 2008-9

NARA Yoshitomo
Sayon, 2006

TAKAGI Masakatsu
Bloomy Girls, 2005

Main artists

Yayoi Kusama / Yasumasa Morimura / Takashi Murakami / Yoshitomo Nara / Mika Kato / Kazuhiko Hachiya / Michihiro Shimabuku / Koki Tanaka / Zon Ito / Kohei Nawa / Kyoko Murase / Haruka Kojin / Kiichiro Adachi / Masakatsu Takagi, and others