Stille, Reduktion und Monochromie in Kunst aus Japan
In the organizer's words:
Although the winter sky in Japan often appears clear and sunny, the days are getting shorter and the periods of darkness longer, flora and fauna sometimes fall into hibernation and some regions sink into silence for weeks under snow.
The presentation of paintings, woodcuts, ceramics and lacquers from the collection of the Museum of Asian Art attempts to trace this special seasonal and emotional mood. However, the limited use of color, restrained design and less noticed or even everyday motifs do not imply any renunciation. Rather, their quiet tones invite us to find peace and contemplation and thus to draw concentrated energy.
Monochrome ink paintings of landscapes, Zen Buddhist figures and the full moon as a symbol of enlightenment refer to a life in harmony with nature as well as to restriction, concentration and meditation as paths to clarity and balance. Bowls decorated with grasses or sugar cane by ceramist Hamada Shōji (1894 - 1978) illustrate a design based on natural shapes and dimensions. Privately published woodcuts (surimono) with poem inscriptions, which were traditionally created and given as gifts at New Year, evoke the transition to a new year, which is one of the most important holidays in Japan. With the exception of two sheets, the examples presented here are characterized by reduced, sometimes abstract or geometric forms. The prints with snakes and melons, on the other hand, represent the zodiac sign of the year 2025, which begins on January 29 according to the lunar calendar.
In the gallery area, which is usually used to display large-format screen paintings, a concrete memento mori and, at first glance, monochrome, beautiful landscape photographs by the artist Reijiro Wada, who was born in Hiroshima in 1977 and lives and works in Berlin, remind us of the harsh reality of our time. They show places of historical tragedies, such as his home town, on which an atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, or the ash lake of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. At second glance, a sea view by Mie Prefecture artist Leiko Ikemura turns out to be a scene of a naval battle, and in the photographs by Muga Miyahara, born in Tokyo in 1971, the bomb and fighter planes even appear in a tokonoma niche otherwise reserved for the contemplation of art.
The paintings in the neo-traditional style of the Nihonga (literally: Japan pictures) by highly famous Japanese painters such as Yokoyama Taikan or Kaburagi Kiyokata, which primarily depict national Japanese motifs, may seem simply beautiful. They were first presented in Berlin in 1931 in an exhibition entitled "Contemporary Japanese Painting" and were subsequently donated. In the same year, the Japanese military provoked an incident in Manchuria, which marked the beginning of tensions on the mainland that eventually led to the Pacific War as part of the Second World War. The aspect of simultaneity is a point of reference for the exhibition "Mio Okido: remembered images, imagined history(ies) - Japan, East Asia and me", which can be seen in an adjacent exhibition space until February 3, 2025.
- Free admission
- Location: Museum of Asian Art, 3rd floor
- Exhibitions at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin: Wednesdays to Mondays from 10:30 - 18:30. Tuesday is a regular closing day, evening events usually start at 7 pm, information on all events under program.
- Special opening hours
Tue. 24.12.2024: closed
Wed. 25.12.2024: 12 to 6 pm
Thu. 26.12.2024: 12 to 6 pm
Tue. 31.12.2024: 10:30 am to 4:30 pm
This content has been machine translated.Location
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