About the Exhibition
Jan Fabre and Funakoshi Katsura are artists who have become highly visible on the contemporary art scene for their superb activities in the area of sculptural representation. This large-scale duo exhibition includes historical artworks (such as 16th century Flemish religious paintings, and Kannon Bodhisattva paintings by Kano Hogai or Kawanabe Kyosai), each of which symbolizes a religious concept that the two artists share as their common background. With reference to “L’ange de la métamporphose,” a talked-about thematic exhibition held at Musée du Louvre in 2008, this exhibition is co-produced with Louvre’s curator Marie-Laure Bernadac who mapped out the above-mentioned project.
Belgium-born Jan Fabre has taken up materials such as insects, dead bodies of animals, stuffed animals, blood and salt for his works since the 1980s, to raise questions about human life and death, spirituality and religiosity. Fabre’s multidisciplinary world of expression including dramas and performances shows us contemporary interpretation and criticism of Western spirituality such as Christian culture and thought.
Funakoshi Katsura, on the other hand, has consistently carved out camphor wood to represent human figures. His whole work shows the established and unique world of expression endowed with a wonderful combination of powerful chisel cuts and delicacy. Funakoshi, who made saint images such as Madonna and Child for his early works, has created a world of woodcarving reflecting transcendence and spirituality also in his later works of human figures. Having recently added a motif of sphinx, his world of production has been further diversified, filled with religiosity entailing the tradition of Buddhist sculpture. Taking a bird’s-eye-view of Fabre’s formative expression through religious figures in Flemish paintings originated in Flanders, Fabre’s roots, we question how his world of expression is related to the Christian culture and spirituality in the background on one hand. On the other hand with a bird’s-eye-view of Funakoshi’s world of expression through Kannon paintings by Kano Hogai or Kawanabe Kyosai symbolizing the history and development of the reception of Western modernism, we question Japanese unique religious faith breathed in Funakoshi’s world of expression.
By verifying the two artists’ worlds of expression in contrast, we try to approach the root of spirituality of each of the East and the West from various angles. Touching on the diversity of modernism in the West, we try to review aspects of the reception of modernism in Japan that is located at the periphery in the Western-oriented worldview. Another question that we try to bring to light is how religious art that seems to have been divided and severed from society in the previous century has been handed down in the undercurrents of contemporary art in the context of advanced globalization in the world. We are also watching with interest how it will develop.
Exhibition Features
1. Grand-scale duo exhibition of Jan Fabre and Funakoshi Katsura, leading artists of contemporary art
The worlds of expression of two artists representing the contemporary art scene─Belgium-born Jan Fabre known for “The Man Who Measures the Clouds” (collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa) and Funakoshi Katsura, one of Japan’s foremost sculptors─are introduced with approximately 160 pieces from their early to new artworks. This is the largest-ever duo exhibition in Japan in terms of the exhibition contents of each artist.
2. Unique project co-produced with a guest curator from Musée du Louvre
This “Alternative Humanities: Jan Fabre x Funakoshi Katsura” Exhibition is a joint production between 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and Marie-Laure Bernadac, who has achieved impressive results as a curator in charge of contemporary art at Musée du Louvre. At Jan Fabre’s talked-about exhibition “L’ange de la métamorphose” mapped out by Bernadac in 2008, large-scale collaborations between the Louvre’s collection and Fabre’s works were exhibited at the Northern School galleries of the Louvre. With reference to the above exhibition, a plan with a new concept suitable for the area of Japan and the field of contemporary art in relation to 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa was worked out to open this exhibition.
3. The spiritual form of human beings living in the 21st century transcending the times and disparities between the West and the East
In this exhibition, historic masterpieces symbolizing what the cultural context is in which the expression of each of Fabre and Funakoshi is formed are also exhibited in collaboration between two artists’ works and classic works as their sources. Flemish paintings originated in Flanders, Fabre’s roots, and modern Japan’s Kannon paintings symbolizing Japanese unique religious faith breathed in Funakoshi’s world of expression gather together and human spiritual forms correspond to each other transcending the times such as the present and the past as well as regional disparities between the East and the West. Many masterpieces of religious paintings and portraits in the 16th century from Musée du Louvre and Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp which are exhibited in Japan for the first time, and modern Japan’s Kannon paintings from Musée Guimet as well as collections in Japan are on display. Kawanabe Kyosai’s “Shaka Nyorai zu” has returned home from Musée Guimet.
4. Japan’s leading experts on Japanese art history are invited as project advisors
Takashina Shuji, Japan’s top-ranking expert on art history, and Furuta Ryo, an enthusiastic scholar of Japanese modern history of art are invited as project advisors. From the angles of history of Western art and history of Japanese modern art, they approach a task of verifying how Fabre and Funakoshi, the two contemporary artists and their worlds of expression, are linked to the extensive and profound history of human beings. Based on their verification, we are given a big question of what humanity is in the 21st century.
