KANO Mitsuo, Serpentinata (Detail), 2004
Photo: Norihiro Ueno

The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura

2-1-53 Yukinoshita, Kamakura, Kanagawa
248-0005
Tel. +81 467 22 5000

Access
Train station: Kamakura (JR Yokosuka Line and Enoden Line). Walk in the direction of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine (about 10 minutes). The Annex is located 5 minutes-walk away.

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KANO Mitsuo
"rūpa"--Crest of the Wave Still Unseen 2013

September 14 - December 1, 2013

Kano Mitsuo (1933-) was born in Tokyo and moved to Kamakura in 1960. Now over eighty, he still continues to create work with more vigour than ever before. Kano appeared on the art scene as a print maker in the post-war 1950s: a difficult age economically speaking, but one in which the arts were thriving. Rather than replicate the new styles and avant-garde trends he saw around him, however, Kano remained committed to pursuing his artistic goal, namely the serenity of the spirit in isolation. In the years that followed, this uniquely inventive creator has continued to tap this rich seam with great diligence.
In 1955 Kano, an almost entirely self-taught print-maker, paid for his own print collection Plants to be published. The following year his work was displayed at the Takemiya Gallery at the recommendation of the poet and criticTakiguchi Shuzo. His dream-like style earned him high acclaim from the first, and throughout the 1960s he won a succession of awards at the print-making exhibitions that were prevalent at the time. As time went on, he began to expand his repertoire beyond the black and white copperplate etchings of his early period. The late 1960s marked the beginning of his zinc plate metal work and multi-colored prints, while the 1970s saw him turning his hand to lithographs, encaustic painting, color intaglio and the like. Later, around 1980, Kano began to produce a large number of works in oil, as well as the art objects and hand-bound books he was creating at the time.
This exhibition, the first to be held in a public art museum since the large-scale retrospective exhibition of the artist's work in Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in 2000, brings together the quintessential elements of Kano’s creative endeavors that have spanned over 50 years, from his printmaking of the 1950s to his most recent oil paintings. The exhibition provides us with the opportunity to view the shifting of Kano’s inventive visions as they shift back and forth between surface and form, word and sculpture across the artist’s many mediums. Not only this, however; the rūpa that appears in the exhibition’s title—the concept of material form within Buddhism—is an expression of that which is concealed at the very heart of Kano’s work, namely the questioning of color itself. This questioning serves as a key to opening up new experiences for us as viewers.

[Artist Talk]
KANO Mitsuo will talk about this exhibition in the gallery (Only available in Japanese).
Sunday, October 20, 2013
14.00-15.30
No bookings needed, free with exhibition ticket

[Curator's Talk]
Exhibition curator will talk about this exhibition in the gallery (Only available in Japanese).
Monday/Holiday, September 16, 2013
Saturday, November 30, 2013
14.00-14.30
No bookings needed, free with exhibition ticket

Closed

Mondays (except for September 16, September 23, October 14 and November 4)

Opening hours

9:30-17:00 (the last admission is at 16:30)

Admissions

Adults: 700 yen (600 yen)
Under 20 and Students: 550yen (450 yen)
65 and over: 350 yen
Senior high school students:100 yen

• Prices in ( ) indicate group (more than 20 persons) discount tickets.
• Students under junior high school age and disabled visitors are of no charge.
• "Family Communication Day": reduced entry for all family members (except for 65 and over) accompanied by children under 18 on the first Sunday of every month (October 6, November 3 and December 1).
• Free admission day: October 11 (HAYAMA's 10th Anniversary) and November 17 (Museum Foundation Memorial Day)