Art Brut from Japan

MuMo Praha 1/10/2013 – 17/1/2014

The third joint project of the Museum Montanelli and the ABCD Civic Association oriented towards spontaneously created art works is focused on contemporary Japanese art brut. The works of the artists who will be represented during the MuMo exhibition have been shown successfully in previous years in the Collection de l‘art brut museum in Lausanne in Switzerland and subsequently in Paris at the Halle Saint Pierre Museum.

The Prague exhibition will be showing works by almost thirty highly talented authors who often work in studios specially adapted for mentally ill and psychologically disadvantaged artists. A representative selection of approximately one hundred drawings, paintings, sculptures and textile works demonstrate the unique esthetic characteristics of Japanese culture, in which their sign system, graphic and also colour minimalism and their feeling for detail, along with traces of contemporary popular culture are reflected. These traditional models are transformed by each of the authors into their own individual, distinctive creative language, thus creating intimate records of their own spiritual feelings.

The aim of the exhibition is not simply to allow the Czech public and foreign visitors an insight into this fascinating and, for us, still exotic creative expression, but also to pose the question of where is today‘s border between creative art and art brut and whether this demarcation is still actually valid.

 Jean Dubuffet defined art brut as “pieces of all kinds – drawings, paintings, embroidery, modelled or sculpted figures, etc. – that have a spontaneous and highly inventive quality and owe as little as possible to customary art or cultural conventions and whose creators are unknown individuals outside the professional artistic circles. (…) We are witness to an entirely pure, raw artistic activity that, in its entirety and in its individual stages, emerges exclusively from the artist and his own impulses.”

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Exhibition artists:
Takanori Herai
Yumiko Kawai  
Satoshi Morita
Masao Obata
Chiyuki Sakagami
Shinichi Sawada
Takashi Shuji
Yoshimitsu Tomizuka

Curators:
Terezie Zemánková, Ivana Brádková

Exhibition prepared by:
abcd Paris and abcd Prague, in collaboration with Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne


Architectural design:

Ivana Brádková

Works on loan from:
Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
abcd collection, Paris
Yutaka Nakano
MEM gallery, Tokyo

With support from:
City of Prague
Czech Ministry of culture
State Culture Fund
Metrostav, a. s.

Thanks for their help and cooperation go to:
Katsuya Ishida, MEM Gallery, Tokyo
Réna Kano, curator, Paris
Václav Kučera, chairman of Czech-Japanese Association
Sarah Lombardi, director of Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
Martine Lusardy, director of Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris
Pascale Marini-Jeanneret, curator of Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
Vincent Monod, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
Yutaka Nakano


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