EUGENE STUDIO: After the rainbow

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) is delighted to present After the rainbow, the first solo exhibition in a Japanese museum of work from the EUGENE STUDIO.  Based in Japan, the EUGENE STUDIO is headed by Eugene Kangawa, an American-born artist who is the subject of growing international acclaim. As Kangawa was born in 1989, this will also be the first solo exhibition at MOT by an artist born during Japan’s Heisei era (1989–2019).

The EUGENE STUDIO has won praise in Japan and around the world for work shown at exhibitions including 89+(2014, Serpentine Gallery, London), THE EUGENE Studio 1/2 Century later (2017, Shiseido Gallery), and de-sport (2020, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa). The EUGENE STUDIO’s activities also extend to filmmaking, and two short films created in 2021 have won awards at or been selected for official showings at more than ten Academy Awards. Current plans call for special opportunities to be made available to view these films during the exhibition period.

After the rainbow will showcase two-dimensional works, large-scale installations, video, and sculptural works from the EUGENE STUDIO. From the acclaimed White Painting series (2017–) and Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland (2017) to entirely new and previously unshown pieces, the exhibition will explore the perspectives, ideas, and philosophies that underlie the studio’s diverse body of work. These are not mere two-dimensional visions but works that instantiate our own existence within the environs and cycles of society as they sublimate a host of themes in parallel, from individual interests and art history to past phenomena and civilization itself.

Indeed, coexistence is an important theme of the exhibition as a whole. The fact that presences of various kinds are found together; the fact that some things are visible while others are not; and the new re-cognition of reality after accepting the perception that some things are good for oneself by nature and others are not—the idea of linked existence emerges from these works along various dimensions.

After the rainbow calls on us to find the wisdom we need at this turning point in history to turn our gaze away from expressions grounded in criticism or irony and toward the real as we propel ourselves into the future.

Teaser video: The exhibition’s teaser video can be viewed here.
Press inquiries: Yoshiko Nawa info@relayrelay.net  

Organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture.
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