Planned by the Japan Foundation and curated by art critic Midori Matsui to introduce a new generation of contemporary Japanese artists to the world, this traveling exhibition features 47 drawings, paintings and video works by 14 artists who appeared on the art scene during the latter half of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s.

Prior to the start of its world tour this autumn, the show will be held in Japan at the Hara Museum. With the consent of Matsui and the Japan Foundation and the cooperation of the participating artists and their representative galleries, the Hara Museum show will incorporate an installation plan unique to the spatial features of the museum, as well as approximately 10 additional works.
The subject of this exhibition is the world of Micropop (see note), a word coined by Midori Matsui to describe the mindset of a new generation of Japanese artists, born in the late 1960s or after, who rearrange fragments of information and knowledge to suggest fresh ways of perceiving the world or give new meanings to the outmoded and banal.

This exhibition explores the position occupied by Micropop within a world characterized by increasing uniformity spurred by globalization and individuals faced with the need to find meaning in their own lives. The challenges presented by these conditions are implied by the two contrasting images contained in the exhibition title Winter Garden: a desolate wintertime garden and a hothouse, imagery that reflects a harsh environment of economic recession and political instability in which artists use cheap materials and simple methods to break down existing structures and uncover the beauty that lies dormant within everyday things.

In these seemingly simple and child-like expressions, the artists have rejected stereotypical artistic and cultural imagery, turning to more primal sources, such as mental associations and dreams, as well as primordial symbols such as fire and water for their inspiration, perhaps discovering in the process a way to ascertain their proper place within a phenomenological world.

Micropop
Micropop is a word coined by Midori Matsui, critic and curator for Winter Garden, to describe forms of artistic expression in which (1) fragments of information and knowledge are rearranged to create new perspectives, sensibilities and behavioral approaches in response to immediate demands in life, apart from ideology or social conventions, and (2) new uses and contexts are given to things that are obscure, outmoded, obsolete or fragmental to create new expressions and pla ces for communication.

This exhibition continues the ideas behind the exhibition The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop held at Art Tower Mito in 2007 (jointly planned by Midori Matsui and Tsukasa Mori) and develops them in a direction that integrates more immediately human and physical concerns.