Shinro Ohtake

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT), is holding a solo exhibition by Shinro Ohtake (1955–, Japan) from November 1, 2022, to February 5, 2023. Ohtake is one of Japan’s leading contemporary artists with a career spanning over 40 years, and the exhibition will be the first major retrospective of his work in 16 years.

Born in Tokyo in 1955, at the start of Japan’s postwar period of rapid economic growth, Shinro Ohtake has pursued a singular artistic vision since his transcendent debut in the early 1980s. Driven by a prolific creative urge, Ohtake has produced an astounding number of works over his career, in mediums ranging from drawing and painting to printmaking, assemblage, sound, moving image, multimedia installation, and architecture as well as essays and children’s books. His appearance in recent years at such major surveys of international art as documenta 13 (2012) and the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) confirms his status as one of Japan’s leading contemporary artists.

Ohtake states that his practice is grounded in working with “what’s already there.” He collects all kinds of materials and images—anything from rusted junk to fading printed matter and thrown out photographs as well as the signs, posters, lights, sounds, smells, and dreams of the city—and then recombines them through a wide array of means. The incredible volume of Ohtake’s output is thus generated not simply by the artist’s own creative impulses but also by his collaboration with others, including such agents as time and natural phenomena. For the viewer, to encounter an Ohtake work is to be charged by an energy that expands beyond the hand of a single artist.

This major retrospective covers almost a half-century of Ohtake’s career, but instead of appearing in strict chronological order, the 500-odd works are grouped according to seven themes—“Self/Other,” “Memory,” “Time,” “Transposition,” “Dreams/Retina,” “Layer/Stratum,” and “Sound”—that encourage dynamic rereadings of the development of Ohtake’s artistic language. It is our hope that this exhibition will give visitors a new appreciation of the tireless invention and wit of a fiercely independent mind.

Shinro Ohtake
Born in Tokyo in 1955. Major solo exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto / Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito (2019); Parasol unit, London (2014); Takamatsu Art Museum (2013); Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa (2013); Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art / Fukuoka Art Museum (2007); and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2006). Group exhibitions include the National Museum of Art, Osaka (2018); the New Museum, New York (2016); and Barbican Art Gallery, London (2016).　Among the many international art festivals in which Ohtake has participated are Hawai’i Triennial 2022, the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (2018), Yokohama Triennale 2014, the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), documenta 13 (2012), the 8th Gwangju Biennale (2010), and The Setouchi Triennale (2010, ‘13, ‘16, ‘19’, ‘22). He has also participated in such historically significant exhibitions as Against Nature: Japanese Art in the Eighties (1989), A Cabinet of Signs: Contemporary Art from Post-modern Japan (1991), and the 1st Asia Pacific Triennial (1993).

Catalog information
Contributors: Doryun Chong, Massimiliano Gioni, Hajime Nariai, Barbara London, Shinro Ohtake
Size and Number of pages: Three newspaper formats (16 pages each), a 16-fold sheet, three panorama sheets (8 pages each), and A4 sized booklet (128 pages)
Price: 2,700 yen (including tax) available at the National Museum of Modern Art Museum Shop.

Curated by Hajime Nariai (Curator, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
Organizers: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Nippon Television Network Corporation
Sponsors: Benesse Holdings, Inc., Fukutake Foundation, Onion Newspaper Corporate, Culture Vision Japan Foundation Inc.
Special Cooperation: Take Ninagawa
Cooperation: Alan Lo, Jehan Chu
Support: J-WAVE