Exhibitions at Le Forum in 2021

2021
Installation view by Tam Ochiai, "Tapetum Lucidum", Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Installation view by Tam Ochiai "Tapetum Lucidum", Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Installation view by Tam Ochiai, "Tapetum Lucidum", Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
The cutting part of Amanatsu orange in “Nurturing Exhibitions” by Mathieu Copeland, "Exhibition Cuttings", Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Installation view of “Nurturing Exhibitions” by Mathieu Copeland, "Exhibition Cuttings", Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Installation view of “The Anti-Museum: An Anti-Documentary” by Mathieu Copeland, "Exhibition Cuttings", 2K video, Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Installation view of Facade intervention "La Longue Marche" by Julio Le Parc, Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Julio Le Parc, "Cloisons à lames réfléchissantes", 1966-2005, Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
View of the exhibition, "Les Couleurs en Jeu", by Julio Le Parc, Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
Installation view of Facade intervention "La Longue Marche" by Julio Le Parc, Le Forum, Tokyo, 2021 © Nacása & Partners Inc. / Courtesy of Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
In the heart of Tokyo, Le Forum is a light-filled exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art, housed in a building designed by Renzo Piano. In 2021, under the directorship of Reiko Setsuda, the iconic space welcomes three hybrid perspectives from the international scene, beginning with a retrospective exhibition dedicated to artist Tam Ochiai, is followed by a group exhibition organised by guest curator Mathieu Copeland. Finally, Julio Le Parc will electrify Le Forum and beyond with his remarkable chromatic explorations.

In science, the tapetum lucidum is the layer of reflective tissue located behind the retina that causes the eyes of certain animals to glow at night. Tam Ochiai borrows this term for the title of his exhibition, which brings together humorous and lively works that absorb the things that often escape us, only to reflect them back even more brightly. Drawn from different series created over the past twenty-five years, the paintings, sculptures, photographs and videos gathered together at Le Forum offer a fascinating retrospective look at the work of Ochiai, who was born in Japan in 1967 and has lived in New York since 1990. None of the pieces in the exhibition are stand-alone works; each one functions, instead, as a fragment of a broader, unsettled narrative. Committed to revealing hidden meanings and unexpected relationships through his art, Ochiai tirelessly explores a protean world rich in poetic associations and complex echoes.

Next up, Le Forum hosts a group exhibition conceived by London-based, Franco-British curator Mathieu Copeland. With his project “Exhibition Cuttings”, Copeland offers an extended metaphor of the exhibition as an organic body that grows artificially over time, using a montage technique to integrate aspects of his past exhibitions. For this exhibition, Le Forum is divided into two separate parts to explore the double meaning of the term “cutting”. The first space opens with a sonorous environment, featuring a sound installation by Nao Nishihara with music composed by Phill Niblock and performed by the Ensemble IRE, David Maranha, Stephen O’Malley, Deborah Walker, Elisabeth Smalt and Japanese vocal group Vox Humana. Bathed in the natural light that filters into Le Forum, this sound installation “feeds” a collection of plants, illustrating the principle of taking cuttings and grafting. The second space, which opens with a painting by Philippe Decrauzat, evokes a different kind of cut, namely the “break” imposed upon cultural institutions by the Covid-19 pandemic, through a documentary film by Mathieu Copeland narrated by Henry Rollins and featuring an original soundtrack by FM Einheit. Using the keywords “cut”, “graft”, and “mount”, the curator imagines ecosystems full of hybrid organisms that function as new territories for visitors to explore.

For the third exhibition of 2021, “Les Couleurs en Jeu”, the world-renowed artist Julio Le Parc unfurls his oeuvre across Le Forum and beyond, occupying the entirety of the Maison Hermès in Ginza both inside and out: a large-scale work will fill the glass façade of the Renzo Piano building. Now 92 years old, the Argentinian-born artist has lived in France since 1958, tirelessly pursuing his research on colour across a palette of fourteen shades. Exploring repetition, rotation, and effects of contrast and variation, Julio Le Parc’s work touches the viewer with a range of sensations:  from vibrating images, to the vertigo of the infinite, to the playful experience of movement. “Les Couleurs en Jeu”, Le Parc’s first solo exhibition in Japan, offers a rich immersion in his decade-spanning œuvre by bringing together early paintings with emblematic series such as La Longue Marche and the Lames réfléchissantes, as well as with suspended mobiles, another significant aspect of the work of this major figure of contemporary art.

Disciplines
Visual arts
Lieu
LE FORUM
Tokyo
Japan
With “Exhibition Cuttings”, guest curator Mathieu Copeland offers an extended metaphor of the exhibition as an organic body that grows artificially over time.
Tam Ochiai explores a protean world rich in poetic associations and complex echoes.
"Les Couleurs en Jeu” is Julio Le Parc’s first solo exhibition in Japan.

Information

  • Exhibition dates
    • Julio Le Parc, "Les Couleurs en Jeu", from 13/08/2021 to 30/11/2021
    • Mathieu Copeland, "Exhibition Cuttings", from 23/04/2021 to 18/07/2021
    • Tam Ochiai, "Tapetum Lucidum", from 21/01/2021 to 11/04/2021
  • Practical information

    Ginza Maison Hermès “Le Forum” 

    8F 5-4-1 Ginza Chuo-ku 

    104-0061 Tokyo 

    Japan

    Open daily 

    Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. (Last admission 7:30 p.m.) 

    Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Last admission 6:30 p.m.) 

    Contact: +81(0)3-3569-3300 

    Free Admission

  • Curator

    Reiko Setsuda

See also