Childhood through the Eyes of Six Contemporary Artists: A New Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum

Fondly known as the “home of the open call exhibition,” the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum offers a platform for artists of all stripes to submit their work for consideration for a coveted spot on the museum’s walls. Successful entries are showcased in the museum’s Public Entry Exhibitions, held throughout the year in cooperation with art groups nationwide. In 2017, the museum redoubled this commitment to public art by launching the Ueno Artist Project, a perennial exhibition series which actively shines a brighter light on the work of select contemporary artists within the scope of a unique theme each year. The project recently returned for another round in 2019, with an exhibition of 55 nuanced, thought-provoking works exploring the theme “Artists Look at Children.”

Turn left when arriving at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum entrance to find the four Citizens’ Galleries. Color-coded blue, yellow, green, and red after the tetradic color wheel, the distinctive galleries reflect the progressive sensibilities of the museum’s designer Kunio Maekawa, a towering figure in Japanese modern architecture. The Citizens’ Galleries host over 250 open call exhibitions per year.

Head downstairs to find Galleries A and C, equally urbane expressions of Maekawa’s architectural genius, and a picture-perfect setting for Ueno Artist Project 2019. “Artists Look at Children” fills these two subterranean floors, with 55 works by six artists, separated into three sections depicting birth, the transition from youth to adulthood, and the creation of new life in parenthood.

From childhood’s loving embrace to searing teenage angst

The exhibition begins in Gallery C, with “Chapter 1: The Object of Love,” articulating birth and early childhood, a tender age of love and affection. Visitors are greeted by Kana Shinjo’s work, depicting a mother’s arms wrapped in warm embrace around her precious young daughters. A Girl and the Cosmos is a notable study in tranquility, the innocent child foregrounded against an idyllic world. However serene, her gaze suggests a lucid beauty, as if she were already imbued with an omniscience beyond her years, perceptive to the machinations of the world.

Ayako Okubo’s Bringing Up Little Life is an overwhelmingly powerful work, depicting a mother as a resolute bedrock, her protective strong arms enveloping an infant. The work conveys the all-encompassing passion of a mother’s love, and a growing child’s peace of mind.

The gallery’s tone shifted dramatically upon reaching “Chapter 2: Growth and Conflict,” the air heavy with the piercing angst of puberty, a commentary on the turbulent discord between one’s self-image and the codified definition of personhood dictated by an oppressive adult society.

Much, by high school teacher Tsubasa Shida, depicts a young girl, perhaps of middle-school age. A smartphone hovers above her outstretched hands, amidst a landscape populated with the glow of innumerable, screen-like rectangles. Smokestacks and skyscrapers pierce the background, superseded by a young man, slouching despondently in the distance. What is the object of this young girl’s gaze? The viewer is compelled to consider the material wealth of the current generation, yet also their suffocating struggle and lack of direction, lost in a sea of information.

Megumi Toyosawa’s work depicting female high school students is a visceral statement on the universal loneliness, ennui, and self-loathing that are part and parcel of one’s conflicted teenage years. At the same time, her nuanced work speaks to the latent explosive energy of young people, poised to puncture their own personal fortress of stifling despair.

Nurture and nature connect in the eternal circle of life

“Chapter 3: The Connectivity of Life” depicts the timeless life cycle, a symbiotic transition from childhood to adulthood, culminating in the cultivation of the next generation.

Known for his 3D mixed-media pieces incorporating gold leaf, washi paper, and sumi ink, Yasuhisa Yamamoto’s work is a poignant antithesis against material culture, envisioning a richer world wherein humanity co-exists with wildlife and nature. He presents a utopian worldview, an idealized paradise we can only hope to reach with time.

Similarly, Masanori Kihara creates vividly colorful, ethereal worlds where man melds with nature in a rhythmical cornucopia of life. His work is perhaps a pictorial representation of the very wellspring of life.

From childhood to adulthood and beyond, life is a never-ending cycle of renewal and progression toward the next generation. “Artists Look at Children” is a veritable tableau vivant, an abundant exhibition encapsulating the full spectrum of life.

Text/Photos：Naoko Tsunoda (Fillmore East Co., Ltd.) Artwork images provided courtesy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum

Ueno Artist Project 2019: “Artists Look at Children”

Dates: Saturday, November 16th, 2019 – Sunday, January 5th, 2020
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Gallery A, C

Note: This exhibition has ended.