Questioning "my feet" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Exploring R&D material from the field of art/design (No.8)

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

If I were to look back and ask myself, "Which museum have I visited most often and repeatedly in my life?"Museum of Contemporary Art TokyoThe Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is located in the eastern part of Tokyo, adjacent to the lush and spacious Kiba Park. Since its opening in 1995, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo has systematically researched, collected, preserved, and exhibited contemporary art from Japan and abroad since 1945. Since its opening in 1995, the museum has systematically researched, collected, preserved, and exhibited domestic and international contemporary art since 1945. The museum actively features works by artists contemporary to those of us living today, so many of its exhibitions are familiar and easy to connect with.

MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku Island

Entrance to the exhibition hall from the "MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku no Shima" exhibition view (left: Hiroki Shimizu, "Aixinjuela Puijie Temporary Fable," 2024)

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo continues to present a series of exhibitions called "MOT Annual," which focuses on the works of young Japanese artists from the perspective of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, which is based in Tokyo, a place where different cultures and fields of expression mix, The MOT Annual is a group exhibition that "cuts out an aspect of contemporary art from the perspective of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, which is based in Tokyo as a space where different cultures and fields of expression mix. The exhibition has been held since 1999, the museum's fourth year of operation, but at that time there were not many opportunities for public art museums to introduce artists of the same generation. The MOT Annual was therefore launched as an ongoing annual program of group exhibitions focusing on new movements in art. Today, it has become one of the iconic projects of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

The MOT Annual's cutoff will change each year, and in 2022, the "MOT Annual" will beMOT Annual 2022 My righteousness is someone else's grief or hatred.", in 2023.MOT Annual 2023 Synergy, Between Creation and GenerationThe subtitle of the exhibition is "2024," which is the 20th MOT Annual, and is reminiscent of keywords such as pandemic, war, NFT, and artificial intelligence, which have attracted much attention in society. While keeping up with new trends in art, the themes of the MOT Annual, being "contemporary" art, are often close to the issues that we face on a daily basis.MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku IslandThe exhibition, titled "The World of the Earth," asks the question, "What shapes our own feet and where do they lead us?

For MOT Annual 2024, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo has focused on four artists "whom we have chosen to take on the challenge of a new experiment. The exhibition was organized with a focus on the "islands" that shape our feet.

What are artists who live in the same era as us looking at? We are pleased to present works by two of the four artists featured in MOT Annual 2024.

Hiroki Shimizu

MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku no Shima" exhibition view, work by Hiroki Shimizu.

Right after entering the MOT Annual 2024 venue, we found the exhibition area of artist Hiroki Shimizu. Hiroki Shimizu (b. 1984) is an artist who "creates stories by weaving together photographs and text based on his research of local history and folklore related to water. This exhibition was set in Dalian's Xinghai Bay on China's Liaodong Peninsula and Tokyo Bay in Japan, and was constructed as a fairy tale, rather than a journalistic story, as it unraveled the story of Dalian as it was tossed about by empire in the modern era.

A closer look at the exhibit reveals a photograph of the waterfront area from Tokyo to Chiba, slightly damaged in places, interspersed with a landscape photograph of Dalian. The reason for the damage is that the film was soaked in seawater in Dalian, damaging the photosensitive layer. Dalian's Xinghai Bay and Japan's Tokyo Bay were connected and overlapped.

For me, Dalian is a place where I have business ties and acquaintances. And the Liaodong Peninsula, where Dalian is located, is a place I studied in modern history class. I have had many contacts with Dalian. But through the work of Hiroki Shimizu, I got the sense that Dalian, which had been somehow a "remote place," became a "connected place.

In the space past the artwork exhibition area, reference materials on the basis of which the works were created were introduced. This is an opportunity to deepen one's understanding of the work and to experience a side of the artist that is not only intuitive or emotional, but is also a researcher.

Ryohei Usui

Ryohei Usui, "Fence," 2024 (detail), from "MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku no Shima" exhibition view

Now, this photo may look like just a plastic bottle stuck in a wire mesh, as you might see in the city. However, the plastic bottle is not made of plastic, but of glass. This is not an everyday scene, but a work of art. The artist of this work, Ryohei Usui (b. 1983), says that he "creates 'PET (Portrait of Encounterd Things),' a temporary construction of an impersonal landscape by precisely reproducing the shapes of plastic products we often see in everyday life with glass and combining them with existing objects. The artist is creating "PET (Portrait of Encounterd Things)," which is a temporary construction of an impersonal landscape by combining existing objects. I didn't realize it until I saw this work, but the expression "a scene of a plastic bottle stuck in a wire mesh that looks like something you might see in the city" is a bit unusual, isn't it? If you think about it, you may start to ask yourself "Why is there a plastic bottle stuck in a wire netting?

Ryohei Usui "Mirror" 2024 from "MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku no Shima" exhibition view

A plastic bottle wedged in a curve mirror on the side of the road probably would not have bothered me before. I would not have recognized a man-made PET bottle as anything more than a commonplace pebble. However, since PET bottles do not spring up naturally, "someone" must have intervened, and they are unnatural. Seeing this work reminded me of such an obvious but forgotten fact.

And while we're at it, we'll "hit the road".

After viewing the MOT Annual and the concurrent MOT Collection exhibition and enjoying lunch at the museum's restaurant, I was ready to go home and do something else. On my way to the exit, I casually glanced at a box of pamphlets on the first floor and saw a map entitled "Douzo no susume" (Recommendations for Leisurely Meandering). The map read, "Let's listen carefully on the 'Otodate' plate. The map also included information about the location of the plaques throughout the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and what you might experience if you stood on them. I was reluctant to do this, thinking, "I don't have time for this...," when a comment on the map by Akio Suzuki, the artist who created the map, struck me. "I feel that the act of being on the road is being left behind in today's increasingly fast-paced world. Sometimes I would like to switch my attention to listening carefully, as if taking a deep breath." ...I was out of my mind just now. I switched my mindset to "more roadwork than work," and began strolling around the grounds with a renewed mindset.

The "foot" is the "question.

On a quiet note, I like the part of the description of the MOT Annual 2024 that mentions the island of Japan. "Reimagining the islands of the Pacific Northwest not as 'closed landforms' floating in the sea, cut off from other land masses, but as 'open landforms,' undulations on the surface of the earth that have emerged through tectonic movements and are connected to other continents and islands on the seafloor, presents another perspective to confirm the invisible connections under the surface of the water. It offers another perspective to confirm the unseen connections beneath the surface." Generally speaking, Japan tends to be discussed under the assumption that it is a closed island nation, but if we assume that it has many connections but is only partially exposed at sea, it changes the way we look at it. It made me realize that there are still questions to be asked, even about things that are familiar to us.

Why not visit the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo to take a fresh look at "your feet"? And don't forget to take a stroll along the way.

Exhibition Title

MOT Annual 2024 Kofuku Island

session (of a legislature)

Saturday, December 14, 2024 - Sunday, March 30, 2025

venue

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0022, Japan

Hours of Operation

10:00-18:00 (Admission to the exhibition rooms until 30 minutes before closing)

closed day

Mondays (open Jan. 13 and Feb. 24), Dec. 28-Jan. 1, Jan. 14, Feb. 25
For more information.Official Sitefor more information.