MAKING A HOME: JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN NEW YORK
October 5, 2007 – January 13, 2008
333 East 47th Street
New York, NY 10017
JAPAN100: CELEBRATING A CENTURY (1907 – 2007)
To celebrate the strong and historic cultural links between Japan and New York, Japan Society Gallery presents Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York from October 5, 2007 to January 13, 2008. The second featured exhibition of Japan Society’s 2007-08 centennial celebration, Making a Home is a large-scale group exhibition featuring the work of 33 Japanese contemporary artists who call New York City home. The show not only includes a broad range of media–from painting, sculpture, and photography to fashion, architecture, and sound art–but also covers diverse age groups, identities, experiences, and styles that display the breadth and depth of Japanese contemporary art as developed, practiced, and presented in New York. Although their individual practices are unique, these artists share the common trait of venturing from their homes in Japan to stake claim to the capital of the international art world, New York City, where each has created a new aesthetic vocabulary influenced by Japan, New York, and the world beyond. Ranging from Misaki Kawai‘s playful sculptures that capture the artist’s interior fantasy world to the renowned artist Yoko Ono‘s poignant conceptualism, the artists and works included in the exhibition provide insight into ideas and processes stimulated by the confluence of cultures that is
New York City.
The exhibition, curated by Eric C. Shiner, is divided into six sections, each closely connected to the notion of what separates a mere “place” from a “home”: “Building Environments,” “Intimacy and Identity,” “Coping with Loss,” “Meditative Space,” “The Process of Making,” and “Referencing the Landscape.”
Artists featured in Making a Home are: ON megumi Akiyoshi, Noriko Ambe, Ei Arakawa, Satoru Eguchi, Ayakoh Furukawa, Toru Hayashi, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Yoshiaki Kaihatsu, Takahiro Kaneyama, Emiko Kasahara, Misaki Kawai, Miwa Koizumi, Yumi Kori, Nobuho Nagasawa, Hiroyuki Nakamura, Yoko Ono, Hiroki Otsuka, Katsuhiro Saiki, Kyoko Sera, Noriko Shinohara, Ushio Shinohara, Go Sugimoto, Kunie Sugiura, Hiroshi Sunairi, Mayumi Terada, Yuken Teruya, Yasunao Tone, Momoyo Torimitsu, United Bamboo, Aya Uekawa, Junko Yoda, Toshihisa Yoda and Yoichiro Yoda.
A full-color catalogue authored by Eric Shiner and Reiko Tomii, a leading scholar of contemporary Japanese art who has worked on many previous Japan Society exhibitions, is available.
RELATED PROGRAMMING:
Centennial Speaker, Martha Stewart: A Passion for Making a Home
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 6:30 pm
A talk exploring her life-long passion for “making a home” as well as her interest in Japan and Japanese contemporary art. Followed by a reception.
ABOUT JAPAN100: CELEBRATING A CENTURY (1907 – 2007)
Japan Society celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding with an unprecedented array of high-profile programming in 2007-08. The celebration occurs throughout New York City and in Japan with further national and international exposure through traveling exhibitions, performing arts tours, symposia, fellowships, and exchanges. Visit www.japan100.org for more information on centennial events and a historical tour of the Society.
GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday through Thursday, 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.; Friday, 11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.; the Gallery is closed on Mondays and major holidays.
ADMISSION:
Japan Society members and children under 16 free. Admission is free to all on Friday nights,
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Kellie Honeycutt
Blue Medium, Inc.
T: (212) 675-1800
E: kellie@bluemedium.com
Shannon Jowett
Japan Society
T: (212) 715-1205
E:sjowett@japansociety.org
