Since 2005, our museum has given Artist Talk sessions where the artist talks about his/her work in front of the piece displayed in our collection exhibition. The event has been held thirty times thus far. Having been intended as an approachable introduction to contemporary art, the sessions have provided artists with chances to explain in plain language their careers and their focus then, offering valuable opportunities for us to deepen our understanding. In the long run, the videos of their talks will become witness of art history.
Focusing on painting from among various genres, this exhibition presents excerpts from the videos of the artists’ talks along with relevant works of art from our collection. All the painters in the videos began their careers from the late 1970s to the 1980s, a difficult period after radical movements, such as Minimalism and conceptual art, severely questioned conventionalities in art. In a situation where artistic vehicles were cut down to minimum and artists had to fundamentally redefine the acts of seeing and making, how did they recover the rich possibility of painting? The achievements in their exploration will be felt in their talks and works.

Artists: Akioka Miho, Okamura Keizaburo, Kodama Yasue, Kobayashi Masato,
Suzuki Shozo, Tatsuno Toeko, Domoto Yuumi, Nakagawa Yoshinobu,
Nagasawa Hideyuki,Hidaka Rieko, Maruyama Naofumi, Yamaguchi Keisuke

*image (left)
Kanashi-11, 2004
© Domoto Yuumi and the museum

Courtesy of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo