Source: Mori Art Museum
Aida Makoto ranks among the most closely followed contemporary artists in Japan today. Since his debut in the early 1990s, Aida Makoto has brought a cynical perspective to such subject matter as pretty young girls, war, and salarymen, touching upon modern and contemporary Japanese society in a stream of striking works. Bringing together over 100 works ranging from early pieces to his very latest work, this exhibition, the first in the world on such a scale, illuminates every aspect of Aida’s practice to date.
In a series of public programs to be held in conjunction with the exhibition, we home in on essentially what makes Aida Makoto a genius, scrutinized from diver se Japanese and international perspectives. In doing so we further hope that now, at a time when we are questioning anew the form and direction Japan should be taking, Aida’ s complex, multifaceted world – Japanese society in miniature – will serve as a medium through which a variety of discussions will arise.
Aida’ s twenty-year career as an artist coincides with the period during which Japan turned in on itself as the economy went through an extended slump following the collapse of the economic bubble, while its neighbors experienced rapid modernization and economic growth through globalization and multi-culturalism. Today, when serious questions are being asked once again of Japan’ s position and role in the international community and in Asia, is not Aida’ s willingness to seriously confront the peculiarities of his own culture – including social taboos, emasculated traditions, history begging for retrospection, and the coexistence of art and mass culture, which he places in front of us – something sorely required as we ponder this country’ s future? We hope that by surveying Aida’s works in the wider context of Japanese modern and contemporary art and its socio-political environment, viewers will also find this an opportunity to contemplate Japanese society and people at a deep psychological level, and the complexity of Japanese contemporary art.
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