Ryuichi Sakamoto @ Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo - "seeing sound, hearing time" Exhibition

Ryuichi Sakamoto 

seeing sound, hearing time 

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo 

Through March 30, 2025 

Ryuichi Sakamoto 

seeing sound, hearing time – Exhibition Poster

Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

A composer and an artist, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO (1952-2023) continuously paved the way for his era through his diverse and cutting-edge artistic activities. Since the 2000s, he devoted himself to creating three-dimensional sound installations in exhibition spaces, which he developed and realized in collaboration with various artists. Focusing entirely on large-scale installation works, this first comprehensive exhibition in Japan looks back on Sakamoto's pioneering, experimental creative artworks, including some of his most well-known previous pieces, and new works that he envisioned for this particular occasion before his passing, which are dynamically constructed in and around the museum building.

Ryuichi Sakamoto was born in Tokyo in 1952. Making his debut in 1978 with the album Thousand Knives, Sakamoto's diverse résumé includes pioneering electronic works in the legendary techno group Yellow Magic Orchestra, producing pop albums and numerous classical compositions, two operas, and nearly 45 original film/TV scores. His film soundtracks have won prestigious awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, a Grammy, and many more. As an activist for many decades, Sakamoto's efforts focused on environmental conservation and world peace, including founding the forest preservation organization “more trees”, and the "Tohoku Youth Orchestra" to support the victims of the Tohoku Earthquake through music. Ryuichi Sakamoto also made considerable contributions to the art world with his work exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. Recently, M WOODS, in China, presented the largest and most comprehensive collection spanning 30 years devoted to Sakamoto's artworks in various media, centering around 8 large-scale sound installations (Beijing, 2021; Cheng-du, 2023). He continued to cross borders into the art world even after death, with the ground-breaking mixed reality concert piece, "KAGAMI," touring New York, Manchester, London, and many future locations. Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away in March 2023 at the age of 71.

Collaboration artists | Shiro Takatani, Daito Manabe, Carsten Nicolai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Zakkubalan, Toshio Iwai

Special collaboration | Fujiko Nakaya

Guest Curator: Sachiko Namba

Curator: Tomoe Moriyama (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

Assistant Curator: Mio Harada (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TOKYO

4-1-1 Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0022

www.mot-art-museum.jp

Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

December 21, 2024 - March 30, 2025

Mika Taanila @ Galerie Anhava, Helsinki - Film without Film

Mika Taanila: Film without Film 

Galerie Anhava, Helsinki 

25 November - 19 December 2021 

Film without Film is Mika Taanila’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Anhava. Using the moving image in versatile ways, Taanila’s work often focuses on the complex relationship between technology and the human mind. It asks: What is cinema?

Mika Taanila’s art is characterised by the kind of thought experiments typical of conceptual art, subtle humour, and a longing for aesthetics that eschews rigid proceduralism.

The conceptual premises and manner of production of the works in the exhibition create a kind of narrative in which the object of humour is hard to define unambiguously. A case in point are the videos “Failed Emptiness. Time” and “Failed Emptiness. Place”. Co-created with author Harry Salmenniemi, the works arise from speculations about how to depict as little as possible on film or, preferably, nothing. Dispensing with camera footage altogether, the first video consists exclusively of elements such as “scene transition effects” produced with video editing software, although the film dispenses with scenes as well. The other work does contain film footage, but it is recorded with a heat camera that, instead of light, distinguishes the temperatures of objects in the shot. Reality takes on a new cast, becoming an eerie surface on which objects shine and glow in unexpected ways.

In “Interiors” and “Exteriors”, Mika Taanila abandons camera and computer technology entirely. The “Interior” series consists of black and white photograms created in a darkroom by moving various filmmaking equipment (film camera, projector parts, DVD player, digital set-top box, film cutter) over photographic paper. The shadow images can be seen as portraits of impossibilities in which the subjects – moving image equipment – appear to move within their frozen portraits, which were created without any such equipment at all. The “Exterior” series consist of lumen prints made by placing movie camera lenses on photographic paper which was then left outdoors for hours to be exposed. During the exposure, the image appears slowly on the paper in colour, without any need of development. Earth’s rotation and changes in weather leave their mark on the images.

The exhibition also includes prepared film books from the “Film Reader” collage series, as well as a new kinetic installation based on found film stills, “A Reflection of Fear.”

Mika Taanila (b. 1965) works with documentary film, experimental film and visual art. He has held solo exhibitions at Padiglione de l’Esprit Nouveau in Bologna (2020), STUK House for Dance, Image and Sound in Leuven (2018), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2013–14), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2013) and TENT Rotterdam (2013). Taanila’s works have been presented at numerous international film festivals and major exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (Nordic Pavilion, 2017), Aichi Triennale (2013), documenta (2012), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Berlin Biennale (2004), Manifesta (2002) and Istanbul Biennale (2001). He has received numerous awards, both in Finland and internationally. Mika Taanila was awarded the prestigious Ars Fennica prize in 2015.

GALERIE ANHAVA

Fredrikinkatu 43, 00120 Helsinki

www.anhava.com

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