Contemporary Japanese art in focus - from the avant-garde to the present day

As part of the exhibition project series HERE AND NOW, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne will be showing contemporary Japanese art from November 13, 2021, under the title together for and against it, placing it in a historically evolved context. The starting point is the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s, which formed in the postwar period and the era of democratization, which in turn took place under the financial and political influence of the United States. At this time, Japan was experiencing tremendous economic growth, serious social changes, and cultural reorientation. The deployment of the U.S. military, which had been stipulated in the security treaties of 1960 and 1970, provoked protests by students and trade unions, followed by police violence - but also all kinds of artistic reactions. Collectives such as Neo Dada staged sensational actions in cities such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Kyoto that etched themselves into the memory of art history.

Key events of the flourishing and newly forming post-war Japan are, for example, the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 and the Expo in Osaka in 1970. In order to illustrate and convey this zeitgeist, historical photographs of the numerous artistic events at the center of the exhibition are staged together for and against it - all of which are on loan from the M+ in Tokyo, Museum Ludwig's partner institution. Furthermore, the exhibition juxtaposes the documentation of these events with more contemporary positions: For example, it lets the collective Chim↑Pom, founded in 2005, intervene in a humorous way with partly site-specific and sometimes spontaneous actions, while the artist Koki Tanaka (*1975) brings in a somewhat more serious view of recent, political events with his meticulously planned video and photo installations. These include, for example, the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the behavior of communities in exceptional situations. The unconventional exhibition can be visited until February 13, 2022.