Urban areas and art are inseparable. Besides continuing to be places that inspire expressionists, cities themselves have constituted an important theme of art. At the same time, visual art has played a significant role in the formation of the image of the city. When examining the inseparable relationship between the two, we notice something interesting: as an approach to complex cities that defy uniform comprehension, expressionists seem to have perceived them as strata with vertical structure, rather than horizontal expansion. They have probably had a gut feeling that there lies, just below the face of the city aspiring to order and homogenization, sediment of dreams, desires and emotions of countless people.

As approaches to the depths of the city, this exhibition focuses on three topics: the Skyline at the top; the Underground at the bottom; and the Palimpsest in the sense of multilayeredness under the surface. Ranging through forty-six pieces including paintings, prints, photographs, videos and materials from various places and times, the show investigates the hidden structure of the city that continues to stimulate our imagination.

*image (left)
Skyline 100280, 2003
© Katsumata Kunihiko

Courtesy of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo