Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art

This exhibition attempts to explore the significant tendencies of contemporary Japanese art shared by the generation of young artists who were born between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, and emerged as professionals between the late 1990s and the early 2000s. The exhibition is an attempt to clarify such commonalities through the expressions of 14 contemporary artists, with the theoretical idea of “micropop.” Micropop, a word invented by Midori Matsui, critic and curator, indicates the methods of: 1) accumulating various fragments of information gained from individual experiences, without depending on dominant cultural discourses, in order to form unique aesthetics or ways of behavior , and 2) re-using preexisting, banal, everyday objects, outmoded fashions, or anonymous places, in a playful way that deviates from their utilitarian functions and social assumptions, in order to create situations or new games in which participants can find new opportunities for mutual communication or meaningful actions.

14 featured artists include Ryoko Aoki, Taro Izumi, Tam Ochiai, Makiko Kudo, Mahomi Kunikata, Hiroe Saeki, Hiroshi Sugito, Aya Takano, Koki Tanaka, Masaya Chiba, Chim↑Pom, Masanori Handa, Lyota Yagi and Keisuke Yamamoto.