Curators in Panic
Japan
Kobe
2021
21
The exhibition Curators in Panic addresses the unpredictable realities of operating a contemporary art museum, presenting unique works by artist Yokoo Tadanori, who has continuously redefined painting since the 1980s. Rooted in the early 2020s — a period marked by the coronavirus crisis and logistical demands from the large-scale retrospective Genkyo Yokoo Tadanori — this show responds directly to the sudden absence of major holdings and the challenges of museum governance. Three participating curators, deeply familiar with the collection, selected their personal favorites not included in the tour, highlighting the profound existence of the artist’s full creative output. This perspective reflects the confusion of managing a cultural facility during a state of emergency. By adopting the curators’ viewpoint, visitors gain an opportunity to freely enjoy the viewing experience and rediscover the rich, constantly changing creative world of Yokoo Tadanori.
Why should you watch this?
Curators in Panic speaks directly to the uncertainties of our present, when cultural institutions and everyday life alike are shaped by disruption and absence. The film captures the uneasy humor of curators calling their own exhibition a “state of emergency,” a phrase that resonates far beyond the museum walls in a world still negotiating the aftershocks of the coronavirus crisis. Their candid voices, recounting both discoveries and setbacks, turn curatorial practice into a deeply human story of resilience and adaptation. Viewers are left with a striking reminder that art, even when interrupted or displaced, continues to create meaning and connection.
Yokoo Tadanori Collection Gallery 2021
Japan
Kobe
2021
13
The Yokoo Tadanori Collection Gallery presents a comprehensive view of the artistic world and deep influences shaping the practice of Japanese artist Yokoo Tadanori. This permanent space, established in 2021 within the Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, displays his original drawings, color proofs, and project designs. The collection offers insight into the cultural and historical contexts that fed Yokoo’s aesthetic, illuminating the wider network of artistic references he engaged with. Visitors can study archive materials and works by figures he admired, such as Francis Picabia and Giorgio de Chirico, revealing the sources that informed his output. The gallery ultimately encourages visitors to recognize the enduring dialogue between personal vision and international creative lineage that defines lasting contemporary art.
Why should you watch this?
The Yokoo Tadanori Collection Gallery reveals the surprising connections between Yokoo’s imaginative designs and the works of artists he admired, such as Picabia and de Chirico, showing how ideas travel across time and place. Scenes capturing his bold color proofs alongside delicate sketches create moments of both delight and contemplation, exposing the processes behind visual invention. By following the intersections of personal creativity and broader artistic currents, the film invites viewers to experience the thrill of discovery and recognize how enduring inspiration emerges from unexpected juxtapositions, offering a vivid reminder of the vitality of art across generations.
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: State of Emergency Declaration
Japan
Kobe
2020
22
Yokoo Tadanori: State of Emergency Declaration explores the artist’s prescient depictions of tense situations where the line between fact and fiction dissolves. Long before the novel coronavirus crisis, Yokoo Tadanori repeatedly created works that now resonate with contemporary global events, reflecting a timeless human experience of uncertainty. This exhibition features his impactful paintings alongside an installation of his recent online series, With Corona, which incorporates imagery like masks in a direct artistic response to the virus. Visitors can observe how Yokoo’s vision, spanning from earlier works to current creations, challenges perceptions of reality, encouraging reflection on art’s power to interpret and shape our understanding of the world during moments of profound change.
Why should you watch this?
The film State of Emergency Declaration resonates now because it captures the unsettling feeling of living through crises that blur the edges of truth and imagination. Long before the pandemic, Yokoo Tadanori painted scenes where reality fractured under pressure, and his recent With Corona collages — filled with masks and cavernous mouths — extend that vision into our present. Confronting these images can be disquieting, even surreal, yet they also sharpen awareness of how art can mirror collective anxiety while offering a space to process it. The takeaway is stark yet universal: in uncertain times, art helps us face fear and reimagine survival.
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.
Yokoo Tadanori: 100 Takes of Hanshan and Shide
Japan
Kobe
2024
2020
100 Takes of Hanshan and Shide presents artist Yokoo Tadanori’s series of 102 paintings, reinterpreting figures from China’s Tang dynasty. Hanshan and Shide, eccentric poets believed to be bodhisattvas, have inspired artists for centuries with their enduring mystery. Yokoo found them an ideal image, projecting them onto diverse scenes like ukiyo-e-style women and marathon runners, a quest begun with his interpretation of Soga Shohaku. This exhibition reveals Yokoo’s sustained creative power after forty years, connecting ancient legends with contemporary art. Visitors will reflect on the timeless interplay between myth and artistic vision, appreciating how one artist continually reshapes enduring narratives.
Why should you watch this?
The film 100 Takes of Hanshan and Shide speaks to our moment by showing how myth and misrule become tools for thinking about continuity and change. Yokoo’s decision to paint 102 versions — placing ragged, poetic figures beside ukiyo-e women, Belorussian lovers, and marathon runners — stretches time and tests who belongs in stories we keep. Some images shock: Hanshan laughing in garish color or Shide pacing through a crowd of runners; others disarm with tenderness. The work feels at once playful and provocative, inviting viewers to reconsider tradition as a living practice and to carry forward compassion and imagination into uncertain futures.
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 in Wonderland
Japan
Kobe
2023
19
Yokoo in Wonderland invites visitors into artist Yokoo Tadanori’s parallel realm, where the boundaries of reality dissolve into a collection of wonders. Drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland, the exhibition guides viewers through a journey that begins with a girl falling into an underground kingdom, then continues into space and an unknown world. The experience progresses through “The Looking-Glass World,” where real and virtual images intertwine, and concludes in “The Land of Dreams,” blurring reality and unreality. Through Yokoo’s distinctive artistic vision, this exhibition encourages a deep immersion into an infinitely expanding universe, prompting reflection on how art can transport and reshape our perception of the world.
Why should you watch this?
The film Yokoo in Wonderland resonates now because it stages how our sense of reality unravels and reforms under technological and social pressure. Yokoo’s Alice-like girl — leaping down a hole into an underground kingdom, surfacing beneath seas and in orbit — models curiosity as a way to face dizzying image worlds. The mirror passage, where reflections splice with virtual figures, feels eerily topical in an era of screens and layered identities. The work unsettles and thrills, alternating moments of childlike astonishment with sudden dislocation. Its lasting charge is both simple and urgent: openness to strangeness sharpens perception, and imagination becomes a civic skill for living together.