In order to deepen people’s appreciation of ‘contemporary art’ the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo hold a series of exhibitions, based on the ‘MOT Collection’ of over 4,000 works, that approach the subject from a variety of angles. This series of events open with ‘Plastic Memories: to illuminate ‘now’. In his ‘Natural History’, Pliny the Elder describes the origins of painting, saying that when a girl’s lover was about to leave on a journey, she traced his shadow, thrown on the wall by the light of a lamp. This is only a fable rather than the truth, but the fact remains that it is a desire to halt the passage of time and preserve an image for eternity that has driven people to create artistic expressions throughout history. When these evolve into ‘works of art’, the personal memories they contain become converted into communal memories.

This exhibition, entitled ‘Plastic Memories’, focuses on the theme of memories that have been removed from their original context of ‘place’ and ‘time’, becoming raw material for the artists to reshape through the power of their imaginations, thereby throwing a light on one aspect of ‘contemporary art’. Numerous different kinds of memories have been brought together, they do not necessarily spring from personal experience, some are communal, in the form of history, while others reside within materials or locations.

As we trace the images brought about by the memories, drifting between reality and fantasy, we find that we become aware of the ‘present’ that brings them back to life. Perhaps it is because in the same way that light is only made visible by the existence of darkness, so it is that we can only grasp the moment that is ‘now’ within the passing of days by using past as a basis. If this exhibition, whose focus moves from the past, to the present and into the future, offers the viewers an opportunity to contemplate methods of illuminating the ‘present’ or socalled ‘contemporary art’, which is an expression of the times in which we live, then we shall called be most happy.

Artists are; Fuyuki Yamakawa, Christian Boltanski, Tomoko Yoneda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Richard Long, Kimio Tsuchiya, Miyako Ishiuchi, Masaaki Nakagawa, Tomio Miki, Yuki Kimura, Yukinori Maeda, etc.

* The text provided by Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Opened dates: April 24 - June 20, 2010