NEWS

FY2024 Exhibition Schedule Follow-up: MACHINE LOVE and Floating Worlds

2024.3.6 [Wed]

To follow on from the exhibitions already scheduled for FY2024 - Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei (Wednesday, April 24 - Sunday, September 1, 2024), and Louise Bourgeois (Wednesday, September 25, 2024 - Sunday, January 19, 2025) - the Mori Art Museum is delighted to announce MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art, which turns its attention to the relationship between some of the new technologies of recent years, and contemporary art.

The Museum will also join the Les Franciscaines Cultural Center to stage the exhibition Floating Worlds: From Japonisme to Contemporary Art from Japan as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2024 arts festival, which will take place in Normandy during summer/autumn to coincide with the Paris Olympics.

MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art

Period: Thursday, February 13 - Sunday, June 8, 2025
Organizer: Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Kataoka Mami (Director, Mori Art Museum), Martin Germann (Adjunct Curator, Mori Art Museum), Yahagi Manabu (Assistant Curator, Mori Art Museum)
Advisors: Hatanaka Minoru (Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]), Taniguchi Akihiko (Media Artist)

With the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and the integration of the virtual and real worlds, the latest cutting-edge technologies have quickly penetrated our daily lives. This tendency has become especially apparent since the COVID-19 pandemic, when many human activities shifted towards virtual space. Looking back, the progress of art and technology has run parallel to each other throughout the course of history, which is especially evident in the field of computer art and video art. While recent innovations in video game engines and AI offer unprecedented possibilities for artists, the advent of generative AI also has raised significant concerns. Such developments are now attracting considerable attention in various fields and industries, including the contemporary art world.

MACHINE LOVE introduces contemporary artworks that employ game engines, VR and AR, and other innovative technologies that have the capacity to extend human creative power, such as algorithms and generative AI. These works explore new aesthetics and image-making through the use of various data-sets that exist in the digital space, while demonstrating novel approaches to art making made possible by interactive networks of countless individuals. Other works examine how online avatars and characters can nurture new types of gender and racial identities that lie beyond the reach of social norms. By adopting these methods, artists delve into the most pressing challenges facing contemporary society, including the environmental crisis, historical interpretation, humanity, ethics, and diversity.

By exhibiting artworks jointly created by “machines” and artists, and offering immersive spatial experiences through large-scale installations, this exhibition provides a platform to contemplate the relationship between humankind and technology, which evokes emotions of love, empathy, elation, fear, and anxiety. Join us in a space where reality and virtual space overlap in order to envision better ways to live out an uncertain future.

Participating Artists
Kim Ayoung, Lu Yang, Sato Ryotaro, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Adrián Villar Rojas, and others

[Joint Overseas Exhibition]

Floating Worlds: From Japonisme to Contemporary Art from Japan

Period: Saturday, June 22 - Sunday, September 22, 2024
Venue: Les Franciscaines (Normandy town of Deauville, France)
Organizers: Les Franciscaines, Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Annie Madet-Vache (Museum Director, Les Franciscaines), Martin Germann (Adjunct Curator, Mori Art Museum)

The year 2024 marks 150 years since the first “Impressionist” exhibition was held in Paris. To celebrate this anniversary, the Normandie Impressionniste Festival, held in Normandy since 2010, has this year scheduled over 120 exhibitions and performing arts programs. As part of this comprehensive lineup of events, to shine a light from both past and present perspectives on Japanese culture and its intimate connection to the development of Impressionism, the Mori Art Museum will join the Les Franciscaines Cultural Center in the Normandy town of Deauville to present Floating Worlds: From Japonisme to Contemporary Art from Japan.

Floating Worlds will feature 34 pieces of Japanese contemporary art by 17 artists from the Mori Art Museum Collection, making it the first-ever exhibition outside Japan that showcases a large group of works from the Collection. These will be joined on the French side by Impressionist and other paintings of the same era, plus Japanese ukiyoe prints, on loan from institutions including the Musée d’Orsay, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Guimet Museum, creating a space for dialogue with Japanese contemporary artworks that will transcend temporal and spatial boundaries. Taking in rooms with perspectives such as “In the Gaze of the Other,” “Vastness of the Coastline,” “Cityscape and Urbanity,” “Portraits of 19th and 21st Centuries,” and “Mysterious Nature,” visitors will find a recurring interplay of historical continuity and moments of resonance with the innovative immersive experiences of today’s contemporary art.

Artists from the Mori Art Museum Collection
Enomoto Koichi, Fukaya Etsuko, Haruki Maiko, Hatakeyama Naoya, Ishida Takashi, Katayama Mari, Kazama Sachiko, Lee Ufan, Miyagi Futoshi, Morimura Yasumasa, Seto Momoko, Shinoda Taro, Shitamichi Motoyuki, Tateishi Tiger, Umetsu Yoichi, Yamaguchi Akira, and Yoneda Tomoko

Artists from Collections in France
Ukiyoe: Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, and others
Artists from 19-20th century: Jean-Francis Auburtin, Pierre Bonnard, Eugène Boudin, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maurice Denis, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Paul Ranson, Félix Elie Regamey, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Paul Serusier, Paul Signac, Alfred Stevens, Félix Vallotton, and others