Enfants Terribles, Premonitions of Oblivion

This exhibition is a group show featuring three artists who are at the forefront of Japanese contemporary art: Morimura Yasumasa (b. 1951), Yanobe Kenji (b. 1965), and Yanagi Miwa (b. 1967). They emerged in the 1990s as artists who symbolized Japanese society at the time, and their creative activities have continued to the present day. The project was initiated by Morimura. Yanobe and Yanagi agreed to join, and the exhibition was brought to fruition in roughly two years through collaboration between the three artists and Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka.

The exhibition introduces each artist’s latest works and is organized into five sections, including a collaborative performance piece. It reexamines the positions of Morimura, Yanobe, and Yanagi within the history of Japanese contemporary art, while also serving as an exhibition that symbolizes contemporary art in Japan today.

Known for his style of intervening in significant works of art history through detailed analysis and the use of self-portraiture, Morimura presents a new work that analyzes the unique pictorial structure of “Japanese painting,” using Joruri Bune (Joruri Boat) (1926, the collection of Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka) by the Osaka-based female painter KITANI Chigusa as its motif. This work is presented as the first installment of “Unheroic Painting,” one of Morimura’s recurring themes.In other works, he redesigns his own pieces as movie posters and has them enlarged by actual sign painters. These works will be exhibited as part of a project that uses his art to depict the local landscapes of Osaka, where he was born and raised.

Influenced by tokusatsu, science fiction, and subculture, Kenji Yanobe has been creating large-scale mechanical sculptures exploring the theme of “survival in contemporary society” since the 1990s. His works, which imbue humorous forms with social messages, have garnered high acclaim both in Japan and abroad. He is currently working on a series of works inspired by Japanese swords, and the exhibition features pieces such as the tachi sword Tenchi-I-Jundō (The Universe Moves in Harmony), created in collaboration with swordsmith Kunihira Kawachi, as well as Hakke-Renkan  (Eight Trigrams Chain) series, inspired by the I Ching. These new works invite viewers to reexamine the traditional values inherent in the pieces, the relationship between form and function, and the history and nationalism embedded within them.

Furthermore, the exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of Yanobe’s work, from early pieces such as the Atom Suit Project—inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its aftermath—to the SHIP’S CAT series, which brought him significant domestic attention in recent years, offering a complete portrait of the artist.

Active primarily in Asia and other countries, Yanagi—who held a solo exhibition at the Japanese Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale—has been creating stage works since 2010. For this exhibition, she has reconfigured sculptures, videos, and drawings related to Yomotsuhirasaka and Giant Witch Lily—her two major projects in recent years—into an installation.

The exhibition also features works based on the theme of “Rostral column” a subject the artist has been exploring in recent years. All of these works address the themes of femininity in contemporary society and the relationship between the female body and society.

Based on the historical fact that the State Hermitage Museum evacuated its collection to the provinces during the Siege of Leningrad (1941–44) in World War II, three artists collaborated to create a performance piece. Using the now-empty exhibition space as a blank canvas, a guided performance titled the Museum of Disappearance will take place. Each of the three artists wrote their own script, with Yanagi serving as director. The production is supervised by Kobe-based Dance Box, and Takayuki Fujimoto of dumb type is participating as lighting designer.