Environmental Art comes to the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris. To be discovered from April 30 to July 26, 2025, the exhibition “The Ecology of Things” will highlight the practices of several Japanese artists, from different generations, engaged with ecological issues from 1970 to the present day.
After exhibitions devoted to Ken Domon, the art of carpenters and the transformations of Tokyo following the 1923 Kantō earthquake, the Japan Culture House in Paris is interested in environmental art. In the spring and summer of 2025, the Japanese cultural center opens its doors to the exhibition “ The ecology of things. Insights into Japanese artists and their environments from 1970 to the present ».
To discover from April 30 to July 26, 2025this installation is designed in collaboration with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Étienne Métropole and the Frac Sud – Cité de l’art contemporain. The idea? Propose a new reading of the links uniting artistic practices that appeared in Japan at the end of the 1960s to those of contemporary artists engaged with current environmental issues.
The opportunity to go back in time and (re)discover several pioneering works from the Mono-ha (The school of things) and Fluxus.
Particularly active between 1968 and 1976, the Japanese artistic movement Mono-ha explores the meeting between natural and industrial materials, such as stone, glass, cotton, sponge, and even wood. Among the artists associated with this artistic movement, there is of course Noboru Takayama or even Kishio Sugaknown for their works using raw materials. For their part, the artists Hideki Umezawa, Koichi Sato as well as Hiroshi Yoshimura preferred the medium of sound to express themselves and compose landscapes that were both musical and visual.
The second movement Fluxus found its impetus in the United States in the 1960s, before developing in Europe and Japan. It combines visual arts, music and literature. The Japanese artist Yoko Ono has also largely contributed to the emergence of this artistic movement, just as Mieko Shiomi et Takako Saito. Each of these artists already took an attentive look at our living environments in a social and ecological dimension.
Through this exhibition “ The ecology of things “, the Japan Culture House also intends to underline the singularity of these artists in having chosen, over the course of changes in society, a certain ecology towards things.
To discover this new exhibition at the Maison de la culture du Japon, come from April 30 to July 26, 2025!
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