The Timeless Imagination of Yves Klein: Uncertainty and the Immateriality

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa is holding the exhibition The Timeless Imagination of Yves Klein: Uncertainty and the Immateriality, featuring works by one of the pioneers of conceptual art, Yves Klein (1928–1962). Showcased at this exhibition are both postwar artists who were active around the same period as Klein, and contemporary artists active today who have been influenced by him. 

The current moment, at a time when the norms of humanity established over the course of the 20th century are being threatened due to war and conflict, overlaps with the state of tabula rasa brought about by the devastation of World War II, from which the search for a new humanity had to begin. At the time, new artistic movements were emerging, such as Zero in Germany, the Spatialism movement in Italy, and Gutai in Japan. This exhibition highlights the theme of “immateriality” that is common to their art.

This exhibition was conceived in collaboration with Emma Lavigne, CEO of the Pinault Collection, and Yuko Hasegawa, director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and was inspired in part by the 2020 exhibition The Sky as a Studio. Yves Klein and his contemporaries organized by Lavigne, the director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz at the time. While demonstrating how Klein’s practice resonated with that of his contemporaries, the exhibition delves deeper into Gutai and expands on the “Japanese elements” pertaining to the relationship between physicality, material, and space, while also adding new works by contemporary artists to emphasize the significance of this exhibition being held in Japan today, and at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art.

The architectural space of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, designed by SANAA, embraces Klein’s concept of “Air Architecture,” which is bereft of either ceilings or walls, allowing the body to fly freely within. In order to show the colors of “living beings and highly evolved individuals” (Klein) as they are, both Klein’s polychrome paintings and Gutai artist Sadamasa Motonaga’s Work (Water) are displayed in what might be called a “breathing space,” where the light changes subtly with the natural illumination. In the central courtyard gallery surrounded by transparent glass, Klein’s unique blue pigment is laid out on the floor against the backdrop of the blue sky. A pair of gold folding screens from Kanazawa, which produces 99% of Japan’s gold leaf, is placed in the same gallery as Arman’s relief. Having attained a 4th dan black belt  in judo, Klein’s supple body, which had thoroughly imbibed the aesthetics and forms of the katas (the aesthetic counterpart of judo actions), would go on to become the basis for the performances that followed. The void is also connected to the Japanese spatial concept of ma (a gap, or negative space). The human silhouette etched by the radiant heat of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima — Human Shadow of Death — inspired Klein’s concept of Anthropometry as a trace of life. The exhibition was designed so that the methodologies, forms and formats, and ritual aesthetics that would permit people or things to be sublimated into an immaterial existence by drawing out their sense of presence in a vivid manner would become interlinked with each other. 

Contemporary artists active today are also featured in the exhibition. Based on his research into echoes in ancient temples and buildings where rituals used to be held, Haroon Mirza (b. 1977) created a blue space installation that synchronizes the frequencies of LED lights and sounds at 111 Hz, while Rintaro Fuse (b. 1993) created a work that turns images from Google Street View blue, and connects these countless anonymous and solitary viewpoints to each other using a neural engine. This exhibition seeks to reinvigorate our imaginative faculties, so that Klein’s imagination, which becomes palpable by being dissected and structured from multiple perspectives, might help us to overcome the stagnation and constriction of our present moment. 

Exhibiting artists
Yves Klein, Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana, Rintaro Fuse, Norio Imai, Akira Kanayama, Kimsooja, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Manzoni, Haroon Mirza, Sadamasa Motonaga, Tomás Saraceno, Kazuo Shiraga, Fujiko Shiraga, Günther Uecker, Lothar Wolleh etc.

Catalog information
Price: 3,600 yen
Size: A4 variant (275 x 225cm)
Release date: November 30, 2022 (tentative)
Number of pages: 152
Contributors: Emma Lavigne, Yuko Hasegawa, Frédéric Migayrou

Curated by Emma Lavigne (CEO, Pinault Collection), Yuko Hasegawa (Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa)
Organized by 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa [Kanazawa Art Promotion and Development Foundation]
Special support: Veuve Clicquot
Support: GUERLAIN
In special cooperation with: Yves Klein Archives 
In cooperation with: Japan Airlines 
Sponsored by: Embassy of France / Institut français du Japon