NPO Aoyama Design Forum presents the recommended exhibitions of art galleries and museums in December 2023. In addition to the schedule of events, we will provide you with detailed information such as the works on display. Please check the website of each museum for current opening hours before visiting.

21_21 DESIGN SIGHT Special Exhibition "Modes and Characters: Poetics of Graphic Design"

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21_21 DESIGN SIGHT holds the exhibition "Modes and Characters: Poetics of Graphic Design" from November 23, 2023. The exhibition is directed by Kiyonori Muroga, the editor of various books on graphics and typography, Tetsuya Goto, a researcher in graphic design, and Kensaku Kato, a graphic designer.

  • Date: November 23, 2023 (Thursday / Holiday) – March 10, 2024 (Sunday)
  • Venue: 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT Gallery 1 & 2
  • Opening hours: 10:00 - 19:00（Entrance until 18:30）
  • Closed: Tuesdays (Except December 26), December 27 - January 3
  • URL: http://tinyurl.com/3xz4vkuk

Towada City Museum of Contemporary Art Special Exhibition “Yu Araki LONELY PLANETS”adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-2.jpg

From December 9 2023 to March 31 2024, the Towada Art Center will present an exhibition of work by artist Yu Araki.
Having spent his youth moving between Japan and the United States, with this vacillating identity as a springboard Araki employs his excellent visual language skills and knack for interweaving imagery to create movie, documentary and animated works dealing with subjects such as mistranslations and misunderstandings between different cultures, both globally and domestically; the relationship between original and reproduction, and interaction between the different types of gaze arising from looking and being looked at.
For this first-ever solo presentation at an art museum, Araki spent two-and-a-half years undertaking research in Aomori Prefecture. The result is a vision of Aomori today through his eyes: of a place shaped by human endeavor in the form of traditional crafts and customs, by recent historical happenings, and by major natural events that have transformed its topography. The exhibition will focus primarily on new works based on the artist’s experiences in the prefecture.

  • Date: December 9, 2023 (Sat) – March 31, 2024 (Sun)
  • Opening hours: 9:00-17:00 (Last admission 30 minutes before closing)
  • Closed: Mondays (the next day if Monday is a holiday)
    *Please check the website for information on other closing days, temporary opening days, etc.
  • Venue: Towada City Museum of Contemporary Art
  • Image: “Yu Araki LONELY PLANETS” main visual
  • URL: https://towadaartcenter.com/en/

Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo “Yasuko Toyoshima: Origination Method”adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-6

For over 30 years since 1990, Yasuko Toyoshima (1967–) has kept the perspective of “I” and continually confronted, in her own ways, various systems, values, and rules that surround us. Toyoshima leverages her interests and feelings of alienation to reexamine and reinterpret the frameworks and rules that govern our thoughts and actions—from the mechanisms of objects and tools, school education, and economic activities to various everyday actions—which we have inevitably internalized and automated. By doing so, she questions how human thought patterns, society, and the self are formed.

  • Date: December 9, 2023 (Sat) - March 10, 2024 (Sun)
  • Closed: Mondays (open on January 8th and February 12th), December 28th to January 1st, January 9th, February 13th
  • Opening hours: 10:00-18:00 (Enter the exhibition room until 30 minutes before closing)
  • Admission fee: General 1,400 yen / University students, vocational school students, 65 years old and over 1,000 yen / Junior and senior high school students 600 yen / Elementary school students and under free
  • Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Special Exhibition Room 1F
  • Sponsored by: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture,
  • Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
  • Image: 《Tonal correction 1》2005-　Collection of the artist　
  • Photographer: Mitsuru Goto
    (Public production, Fuchu Art Museum, 2005)
  • URL: https://tinyurl.com/yw4k76mv


Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo " MOT Collection Membrane of the Time Special feature | YOKOO Tadanori―Ever-Changing, Like Water 100th Anniversary of Birth | Sam FRANCIS"adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-3

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo houses approximately 5,700 artworks in its extensive collection, which spans the modern and contemporary periods with a focus on art of the postwar years. Each installment of the “MOT Collection” exhibition introduces artworks in the collection from various themes and angles in its effort to convey the diverse appeal of contemporary art. Featuring Yokoo’s oeuvre spanning from the 1960s to recent, the exhibit explores new appeals of his artistic practice through focusing on expressions related to “water” that appears in many of his rich variety of works. In addition, works by artists with a deep connection to Yokoo will be presented.

  • Date: December 2, 2023 (Sat) - March 10, 2024 (Sun)
  • Closed: Mondays (open on January 8th and February 12th), December 28th to January 1st, January 9th, February 13th
  • Opening hours: 10:00-18:00 (Enter the exhibition room until 30 minutes before closing)
  • Admission fee: General 500 yen / University and vocational school students 400 yen / High school students and over 65s 250 yen / Junior high school students and under free
  • Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Collection Exhibition Room
  • Sponsored by: Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Tokyo Metropolitan
  • Foundation for History and Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
  • URL: https://tinyurl.com/3n8hs53r

Art Tower Mito “Gen Imamura Exhibition”

adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-5"Gen Imamura Exhibition" takes place at Art Tower Mito from November 3, 2023 to January 28, 2024 (Sunday). Gen Imamura creates humorous forms by adding small gaps, switching the top and bottom, or simply turning them inside out, using ordinary objects that we don't normally pay attention to. Inextricably linked to everyday life, his style reminds viewers of a profound world. The exhibition marks Gen Imamura's first solo exhibition at an art museum in 10 years, after he started his creative activities in Kyoto in the early 1980s.

Date: November 3, 2023 (Friday/Holiday) - January 28, 2024 (Sunday)

Opening hours: 10:00-18:00 (admission until 17:30)

Closed: Mondays *If Monday is a holiday, the following Tuesday, year-end and New Year holidays

Venue: Art Tower Mito Contemporary Art Gallery, Entrance Hall

Image: “Mori Niimasu” Utsunomiya Museum of Art

URL: https://tinyurl.com/52ew74tp

Co-sponsored by Fukuda Museum of Art and Saga Arashiyama Bunkakan " Edo Paintings A to Z – Jakuchu, Hokusai, Rosetsu and more"

adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-7Until January 8, 2024, the Fukuda Art Museum is co-hosting the exhibition'' Understanding Edo Paintings from Scratch - Ah! Jakuchu, oh! Hokusai, Wow! Ashishuki'' in collaboration with Saga Arashiyama Bunkakan. The Fukuda Art Museum, the first venue, is showing paintings from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries by Tawaraya Sōtatsu, Ogata Kōrin, Itō Jakuchū, and Maruyama Ōkyo. Works by other artists also feature, including Nagasawa Rosetsu’s large-scale god of wealth painting, Daikokuten.
In addition, you can see works by Shinagawa Ryō, an up-and-coming living artist who draws inspiration from Edo-period art, including the Rinpa style that dates back to the 17th century.　(Artworks of Shinagawa Ryō are not for sale)
Meanwhile, at the second venue, Saga Arashiyama Museum of Arts & Culture, welcome to our ukiyo-e festival! Along with Hokusai masterpieces such as Great Tengu and Three Beautiful Women at Sumida River Bank, you can see, Hiroshige’s masterly woodblock print series, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. Viewing this exhibition, you will easily see why Edo-period art has so many fans today and, if you already appreciate the styles, you can refine your understanding.

  • Date: October 18, 2023 (Wednesday) - January 8, 2024 (Monday, holiday)
  • First semester: October 18th (Wednesday) - December 4th (Monday)
  • Second period: December 6th (Wednesday) - January 8th, 2024 (Monday / Holiday)
  • Opening hours: 10:00-17:00 (last entry 16:30)
  • Closed: December 5th (Tuesday) for exhibition changes, New Year
  • holidays: December 30th - January 1st
  • First venue: Fukuda Museum of Art (3-16, Saga Tenryuji Aonobaba-cho, Ukyo-ku, Kyoto City)
  • Second venue: Saga Arashiyama Bunkakan (11, Saga Tenryuji Abonobaba-cho, Ukyo-ku, Kyoto City)
  • Image: Katsushika Hokusai “Great Tengu” (detail)
  • URL: https://tinyurl.com/3seuknr2
  • https://www.samac.jp/en/

Ambient-themed audiovisual art exhibition “AMBIENT KYOTO 2023”

adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-9The second installment of BRIAN ENO AMBIENT KYOTO, "AMBIENT KYOTO 2023," runs from October 6, 2023 (Friday) to December 24, 2023 (Sunday). Two venues hosts the event: the former factory (1st basement floor of the Kyoto Shimbun Building) and the 93-year-old Kyoto Chuo Shinkin Bank Welfare Center, where the event was also held last year. Throughout the building, ZAK's stereophonic sound, ambient light, images, fog, and Kan Izumi's scents "approach the hearing" in order to engage the senses. By creating an interactive installation work that opens up all senses and can be enjoyed by the whole body, this exhibition will continue the ambient nature inherited from Brian Eno last year while transmitting a "new form of ambient."

DIESEL ART GALLERY Solo exhibition “POSE” by Yukino Yamanaka

adf-webmagazine-info-museum-dec-8In Bakurocho, Nihonbashi, Diesel Art Gallery presents a solo exhibition by Yukino Yamanaka titled "POSE" from Saturday, December 2, 2023 to Tuesday, January 16, 2024. Throughout her work, she portrays amorphous, non-human beings that writhe within the physical contours of humans and within the state of phenomena. Throughout her career, she has consistently used people as her motif, and her style has evolved from figurative to abstract drawing. There is no information in the blank areas, such as highlights blown out, liquid flowing between bodies, selfies and artworks.

  • Date: December 2, 2023 (Saturday) - January 16, 2024 (Tuesday)
  • Venue: DIESEL ART GALLERY
  • Address: cocoti DIESEL SHIBUYA B1F, 1-23-16 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
  • TEL: 03-6427-5955
  • Opening hours: 11:30-20:00 (subject to change)
  • Admission fee: Free
  • Curator: CON_ (Web | instagram)
  • Design: Chihiro Honda
  • Construction: Hiroaki Takahashi
  • URL: https://tinyurl.com/mr49uudt