Genkyo Yokoo Tadanori
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan
July 17, 2021 – October 17 Oct, 2021

We are delighted to announce the “GENKYO YOKOO TADANORI” exhibition to be held at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo from July 17 to October 17, 2021. Since debuting in 1960s, Tadanori Yokoo has always been active on the front lines as one of the leading contemporary artists, keeping fascinating Japan and the world. The exhibition showcases the comprehensive collection of Yokoo’s creative work that stretches over 60 years. Yokoo himself supervised this exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo by reorganizing his successful exhibition titled “GENKYO YOKOO TADANORI”, which was held at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and drew much attention as the artist’s largest-ever exhibition.

In this exhibition, more than 600 items will be on display, including his latest works shown to the public for the first time. Yokoo has been depicting the “realm of imagination” (幻境 , pronounced “genkyo”) as a wildly splendorous world of images that draw from the “original homeland” (原郷 , also pronounced “genkyo”) of all human souls. The exhibition will be an opportunity for witnessing the “present state” (現況 , again pronounced “genkyo”) of Tadanori Yokoo’s art.

For 40 years since his so-called “painter’s declaration” in early 1980s, the artist Tadanori Yokoo has created a countless number of works using everything in nature as motifs without adhering to any given style. “GENKYO YOKOO TADANORI” in Tokyo is the largest-ever exhibition featuring the comprehensive collection of Yokoo’s art with more than 600 items, centering on paintings. The exhibits also include his early graphic works.

Under the supervision of Tadanori Yokoo, the successful “GENKYO YOKOO TADANORI” exhibition held at Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art under the theme of “A Visual Autobiography” has been reconstructed from the bottom up and reborn into a totally new one with more than half of the works from the “GENKYO” exhibition replaced. In “Waterfall Installation”, the gallery walls are lined with over 10,000 postcards of waterfalls, which Yokoo collected as a reference for drawing waterfall paintings.

The exhibits also include works from “WITH CORONA” series, which are scattered throughout the museum. Yokoo has been posting the “WITH CORONA” series, a collage of his works or photos with a mask motif, on Twitter and his blog since May, 2020.

Tadanori Yokoo was born in 1936 in Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture. After graduating from high school, he started his career as a designer in Kobe, went to Tokyo in 1960 and became widely known as a graphic designer and illustrator. In 1980, after seeing a comprehensive Picasso retrospective exhibition at MoMA in New York, he set out to become a full-fledged painter. Using various techniques and styles, Yokoo has produced paintings on various themes relating to all things in the universe, which made him an internationally acclaimed artist.

After 2000s, his works have been exhibited at many museums in Japan and the world; Yokoo’s solo exhibitions were held at national and public museums in Japan and at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris (2006). Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art opened in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture in 2012 and Teshima Yokoo House opened in Teshima, Kagawa Prefecture in 2013.

more. www.mot-art-museum.jp