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.
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’s Haunted Museum
Japan
Kobe
2021
13
Yokoo Tadanori’s Haunted Museum presents a compelling exploration of the intrinsic connection between art and fear, featuring a diverse range of the artist’s works. Yokoo Tadanori has consistently pursued phenomena that remain invisible or unexplainable by science, a fascination rooted in his childhood experiences with profound darkness and mystical encounters in Nishiwaki. This deeply personal history informs much of his art, from his celebrated illustrations for the Complete Works of Edogawa Rampo to his paintings created since his “painter’s declaration.” The exhibition, designed with deliberately darkened spaces, encourages visitors to engage with their own ambivalent emotions of wanting to look yet fearing the unknown. It highlights art’s enduring capacity to interpret and express humanity’s primal responses to mystery and the unseen, fostering a reflection on these universal aspects of human existence.
Why should you watch this?
The film Yokoo Tadanori’s Haunted Museum asks what happens when fear and curiosity meet in the same moment. Drawing on childhood nights of complete darkness and on the unsettling imagery of his Edogawa Rampo illustrations, Yokoo turns the unseen into something you can almost touch. A face appearing out of shadow or a mouth repeated like a chant unsettles, yet also holds you in place. The experience lingers because it reminds us that fear is not only about danger but about discovery, and that learning to face it can change how we see the world.
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.