Yokoo Tadanori: Wow! ★ Y-Junctions
Japan
Kobe
2024
16
Wow! ★ Y-Junctions presents Yokoo Tadanori’s extensive and evolving series, initiated in 2000, which transforms familiar three-way road junctions into profound artistic landscapes. This ambitious project began when Yokoo photographed a night scene in his hometown, revealing unexpected depths in everyday scenery. What started as an introspective world of light and shadow evolved through phases of explosive color, continuously generating new variations. The exhibition highlights this ongoing artistic exploration, featuring works from the series’ early years (2000-2005) and more recent creations from 2016 onwards. Visitors can witness how one artist’s singular vision redefines perception, inviting reflection on the hidden beauty and endless transformations within the commonplace world around us.
Why should you watch this?
The film Wow! ★ Y-Junctions speaks to our moment because it shows how a single flash of perception can turn ordinary streets into places for renewed attention and meaning after collective disruption. Yokoo’s nocturnal photograph of a three-way junction becomes a recurring voice that shifts from penumbral stillness to explosive color, producing scenes both eerie and exhilarating: a lamplit fork that reads like a private memory and a sweep of saturated paint that reads as public joy. These moments unsettle and uplift in equal measure, and the film’s lasting takeaway is clear—close looking can change how we imagine shared life.
Yokoo Tadanori: Forest in Soul
Japan
Kobe
2023
17
Yokoo Tadanori: Forest in Soul brings to life the artist’s 2022 novel, Genkyo no mori, transforming its narrative into an immersive exhibition. Yokoo Tadanori, a renowned painter and writer, explores art and life through conversations with 280 departed souls. These figures, from celebrated artists like Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp to personal acquaintances and his beloved cat Tama, profoundly shaped Yokoo’s artistic vision throughout his career. The exhibition’s forest-like setting visually embodies these dialogues, inviting visitors to wander through Yokoo’s imagined world. Guests will discover how timeless influences from diverse realms can inspire creativity, prompting reflection on the enduring connections between existence, artistry, and memory.
Why should you watch this?
The film Forest in Soul speaks urgently to our moment by turning absence into conversation, showing how art sustains communities when memory fragments. Yokoo stages a forest where Y meets 280 departed voices — Picasso and Duchamp one moment, Mishima and Tama the next — so that art, history, and the personal overlap. The effect is at once uncanny and consoling: a circle of vanished figures arguing, joking, and offering stubborn truths that unsettle received stories while nourishing imagination. Moments such as the grand forum of the departed and a whispered exchange with Yokoo’s cat create both wonder and intimacy. The takeaway: listening across time renews how we live and make meaning together.
Mr. Yokoo’s Palette
Japan
Kobe
2022
19
Mr. Yokoo’s Palette showcases artist Yokoo Tadanori’s striking use of color, tracing his vibrant painting career since his “painter’s declaration” in the early 1980s. This pivotal moment marked his shift from graphic design to a prolific period of pictorial experiments, creating diverse works without fixed subjects or styles. The exhibition uniquely reorganizes his artistic world by categorizing paintings from series like Pink Girl and Y-junction based on their dominant hues, transforming the museum galleries into a grand palette. Visitors will discover background materials, including actual used palettes and paints from his studio, offering a glimpse into his creative process. This presentation invites reflection on the overwhelming power of Yokoo’s colors and how a singular artistic element can define an entire body of work, offering a fresh perspective on his timeless vision.
Why should you watch this?
The film Mr. Yokoo’s Palette is urgently relevant now because it shows how color reshapes perception when attention fragments across screens and crises. By arranging Yokoo’s paintings by hue and treating the galleries as a single palette, the film links his post-1980s experiments to present hopes for repair and renewed attention. Scenes like the volcanic red of Pink Girl and the quiet close-ups of Yokoo’s stained studio palettes offer both sensory exhilaration and documentary intimacy. That mix of visual shock and reflective evidence prompts wonder and thought, leaving viewers with a clear takeaway: learning to read color helps us see and respond more deeply to the world.
Forward to the Past: Yokoo Tadanori’s Road to Hanshan and Shide
Japan
Kobe
2022
17
The exhibition Forward to the Past: Yokoo Tadanori’s Road to Hanshan and Shide presents artist Yokoo Tadanori’s compelling new paintings, inspired by the Tang-dynasty (618-907 CE) Zen monks Hanshan and Shide, alongside key works from his extensive artistic journey. Responding to the profound global shifts beginning in 2020, Yokoo retreated to his studio, developing his “moro-tai” (obscure style) to portray Hanshan and Shide, celebrated for their tousled hair, ragged clothes, and hearty laughter. This collection reveals how an artist’s personal introspection during times of societal change can lead to an unexpected connection with historical figures and artistic renewal, inviting visitors to consider the enduring power of creative resilience across ages.
Why should you watch this?
The film Forward to the Past: Yokoo Tadanori’s Road to Hanshan and Shide is timely because it shows how an artist’s practice can turn isolation into a public language of resilience and wit. Yokoo’s loose moro-tai brushwork reimagines Tang-era misfits as companions for our own fraught moment—ragged clothes and hearty laughter become forms of resistance. A trembling contour that bursts into a grin, or a pale wash that reads like a private confession, mixes unease with solace. The experience challenges and comforts in equal measure, leaving a simple charge: art can hold loss, reopen stories, and invite renewed care for one another.
Abdellatif Laâbi: A Poet Passes Through
Morocco
Rabat
2024
11
A Poet Passes Through celebrates the expansive world of Abdellatif Laâbi, the Moroccan writer, poet, and painter, at the Mohammed VI Museum in Rabat. This exhibition explores Laâbi’s rich and engaged body of work, presenting him as a voice for a generation seeking meaning through art. It unveils the creative spirit of an era, featuring literary works, archival documents, paintings, and videos that trace his journey and reveal his less-known facet as a painter. A significant focus is the groundbreaking Souffles review, co-founded by Laâbi, which profoundly transformed Moroccan culture and liberated minds. Visitors will discover how one artist’s vision and intellectual struggle historically shaped artistic expression and continue to resonate today, offering a unique insight into a life dedicated to creative impact.
Why should you watch this?
A Poet Passes Through speaks directly to questions of voice, memory, and cultural freedom. Abdellatif Laâbi’s journey — from the radical energy of Souffles to the intimacy of his paintings — shows how words and images can both confront oppression and nurture renewal. The exhibition reveals the texture of a life lived in dialogue with history, where poetry became protest and later painting carried a quieter, but no less powerful, resonance. To watch it is to sense how one artist’s struggle for expression connects with ongoing searches for dignity and meaning, making Laâbi’s work as urgent as it is timeless.
“Rage and Desire — The Beating Heart of Men” by photographer Gérard Rancinan and writer Caroline Gaudriault
Morocco
Rabat
2021
11
This exhibition, Of Rage and Desire, The Beating Heart of Men, presents a unique photographic and literary confrontation exploring the state of humanity in the modern era. Conceived by international photographer Gérard Rancinan and French author Caroline Gaudriault, the project uses monumental imagery and reflective texts to critically examine the profound social contradictions and transformations that have defined life in the 20th and 21st centuries. The display features Rancinan’s striking, metaphor-rich photographs, which often reinterpret classic masterpieces, alongside Gaudriault’s powerful calligraphic installations. Organized into three immersive parts, the exhibition charts our complex relationship with Modernity and societal upheaval. Visitors leave having considered the full range of human feeling — our hopes, rages, desires, and responsibilities — within the continuous transformation of the global world.
Why should you watch this?
The film Of Rage and Desire, The Beating Heart of Men speaks directly to our fractured present by pairing Gérard Rancinan’s monumental, often operatic photographs with Caroline Gaudriault’s hand-written texts, forcing a conversation between image and language about power, longing, and social fracture. Moments such as a staged tableau that echoes a classical masterpiece and a nearby wall of looping calligraphy confront viewers with feeling and argument at once — beautiful, unsettling, and hard to look away from. The effect is both visceral and cerebral: it provokes anger, invites reflection, and asks a final responsibility of us all — to name what we want and what we must change.
Hyogo Prefectural Yokoo Emergency Hospital
Japan
Kobe
2020
18
The exhibition Hyogo Prefectural Yokoo Emergency Hospital explores the profound connection between artist Yokoo Tadanori’s body, his life, and his creative output. Spanning his journey from sensory childhood experiences to confronting old age, the exhibition highlights Yokoo’s unique philosophy of trusting physical sensation over mental states, even in the face of numerous illnesses and injuries such as asthma and facial palsy. The museum is transformed into a hospital setting, featuring works, diaries, and sketches by Yokoo, including his prophetic With Corona series of 2020 which addressed masks. Viewers are invited to reexamine their own relationship with the physical and consider how challenges, including those of a global pandemic, can inspire resilience and artistic force. This presentation underscores the body as a truthful guide for life and art.
Why should you watch this?
Hyogo Prefectural Yokoo Emergency Hospital reframes illness, aging, and crisis as sources of creativity rather than decline. In transforming a museum into a functioning hospital, the exhibition unsettles yet captivates by asking visitors to confront the fragility of the body — the same fragility Yokoo has long turned into art. His sketches made from a sickbed and the eerie humor of his With Corona collages capture the tension between vulnerability and resilience with startling clarity. The experience ultimately reminds us that the body, in all its imperfections, can guide not only personal survival but also shared imagination for the future.
Yokoo Tadanori’s Game of Life
Japan
Kobe
2025
18
Yokoo Tadanori’s Game of Life transforms the artist’s remarkable journey into an interactive board game, inviting visitors to experience his extensive artistic world firsthand. Born in 1936, Yokoo Tadanori has navigated a career spanning decades, marked by a philosophy that embraces destiny and chance. The exhibition explores how his art reflects life’s unpredictable path, where outcomes are often left to fate, much like reaching the “Finish” square in a game. Through this engaging format, featuring the visionary artist’s work, the exhibition encourages reflection on the interplay of choice and fortune in shaping creative expression and individual trajectories. Visitors will gain a fresh perspective on his unique artistic vision and the unpredictable nature of life itself.
Why should you watch this?
The film Yokoo Tadanori’s Game of Life feels urgent now because it frames existence as both play and chance, echoing the uncertainty of our own times. Yokoo’s use of the board game format highlights how life’s path is shaped as much by accident as by intention, a theme that resonates in an era of shifting global realities. Moving between moments of triumph, setback, and surprise, the exhibition transforms autobiography into a shared reflection on fate. The playful roll of the dice becomes a metaphor for resilience, leaving viewers with a reminder that unpredictability is not chaos but a condition of living.
Requiem: Cats, Portraits, and Yokoo Tadanori
Japan
Kobe
2024
17
Requiem: Cats, Portraits explores artist Yokoo Tadanori’s profound connections with departed friends, family, and beloved cats, tracing his influential career from the 1960s to the present. Born in 1936, Yokoo’s artistic journey has always been shaped by deep personal relationships and collaborative endeavors across various creative fields. The exhibition features portraits and personal statements, alongside items like the Tama, Come Home series, dedicated to his late cat. Visitors will also see examples of his enduring friendship with designer Issey Miyake, including iconic invitation designs from the 1970s onwards. This unique presentation invites viewers to reflect on how cherished relationships transcend time, influencing an artist’s vision and offering a glimpse into a timeless “Yokoo World.”
Why should you watch this?
The film Requiem: Cats, Portraits speaks to the need to keep memories alive in a time when loss touches many lives. Yokoo Tadanori’s portraits of friends, family, and his late cat Tama are not only records of affection but also reminders of how relationships shape creative vision. The display of Issey Miyake’s invitations alongside Yokoo’s drawings captures the energy of a friendship that spanned decades, showing how personal ties can fuel artistic innovation. Moving between private recollection and shared cultural history, the work invites viewers to consider how love, grief, and memory continue to shape the world we inhabit.