Collection Exhibitions

The Building exhibition sets out to examine the relationship between art and architecture, and architecture and art by looking back at various artistic trends and experiments from the '60s to the present through works from the museum collection.

The Significance of Focusing on Constructing and Creating in Hiroshima

This exhibition examines the relationship between art and architecture in three sections.

First, the focus in "Sculpture as a Form of Architecture" is on architectural construction and the conception of space in art as seen in the experiments of Minimalism and Mono-ha. Then, in "The Realm of Imaginary/Unbuilt Architecture," we look at the imaginary architectural worlds that were invented and freely developed by artists in various media such as paintings, prints, and videos. Finally, in "Intervention in the City," we introduce challenging projects by artists who dared to intervene in urban spaces with organic architectural complexes and imbued their work with a social outlook that seeped between the cracks of ordinary life and undermined preconceived notions.

The devastating natural power of last year's massive earthquake and tsunami mercilessly destroyed people's everyday activities and the towns in which they conducted them. In Hiroshima, a city which managed to recover from a tremendous loss, we hope to examine a variety of forms and attempts to construct and create art.

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Focusing on art works (and series of works) used on the bindings and covers of literary works, and art works that incorporate words, we examine the close correlation between visual images and texts by presenting a wide range of artistic expressions.

Considering the Connections between "Words" and "Images" in Works from the Collection

In viewing art works such as paintings and sculptures, our imagination is sometimes triggered by the narratives that seem to lurk behind the images, causing us to wonder what someone in a picture might be thinking or what a certain landscape might represent. In reading a literary work, we also envision images based on descriptions of scenes or people in the text, and on the other hand, our imagination is sparked by interpreting the content or atmosphere in an illustration. Thus, there is a close and varied relationship between the visual images in a painting or sculpture and the words in a text.

In this exhibition, through this group of works with links to words, we examine the relationship between visual images and texts.

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The atomic bomb, recovery – expression associated with the place called Hiroshima

Isamu Noguchi, sculptor of mixed Japanese-American parentage whose career straddled both countries, designed the handrails on the Peace Bridge and West Peace Bridge near Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, naming them respectively "Tsukuru (To Build)" and "Yuku (To Depart)". These names also carry connotations of "creating" and "passing", as well as "living" and "dying". Hiroshima's status as target of the first atomic bombing in human history and its subsequent recovery represent not only the tragedy that occurred here, but the very threat that continues to confront humanity in the nuclear age. The city has also taken on a symbolic status as proof of the power of human endeavor to recover from the bomb's catastrophic destructive force. To date numerous artists have produced works associated with Hiroshima. In their offerings can be found expression that goes beyond the devastation wrought by the A-bomb as an individual phenomenon and the associated sorrow and anger to question fundamental aspects of the human condition. From this viewpoint, Hiroshima offers imaginative clues that compel us to turn our attention to the pain of those on the other side of physical and cultural divides, and connect to constantly changing present-day issues.

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On this exhibition, featuring works from the HMoCA collection ranging from painting and photography to video, sculptural pieces and installations, all specifically chosen to convey a sense of the elements of ‘whole’ and ‘part’ and their relationality.

If an individual work of art is viewed as a ‘whole’, by rights it will contain component ‘parts’. But when it comes to artistic expression, ‘parts’ do not exist solely as elements buried in the ‘whole’. This is thus a relationship by no means measurable by simple add-back analysis or judgment, that is by assuming that the sum total of the ‘parts’ is the ‘whole’, or that the ‘whole’ can be broken down into ‘parts’.

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