Aspects of "Portrait" : People, Cities, Museums

Designed to coincide with the "SELF and OTHER : Portraits from Asia and Europe" exhibition, Collection 3 focuses on the theme of portraits. Regardless of the artistic approach or style of expression, the subject of people is one that is never entirely forgotten.
In first section, "Portraits in Modern Sclupture," in Marino Marini's sculpture, the dancer assumes a form that is imbued with the tension of movement. In the second section, "Portraits in Post-War Japanese art," drawings by Tatsuo IKEDA depict human figures that look nearly like a monster, seemingly expressing the distorted form that people's lives have been made to assume in contemporary society.
There are also numerous examples of works that don't actually depict human being. In the third section, "Portrait and Object," by using objects to make body parts into fragments or increase the number of them, the artist evoke emotions such an fear, desire, and obsession that we harbor within us. And in the fourth section, "Portraits of the Absence," we find works that are heavily tinged with images of life and death created through the use of old clothes, a notice to report about soldiers killed in action, and a chair with a hole in it that suggests an instrument of torture.
In the fifth and sixth sections, "Portraits of People in Contemporary Western Art," we find a painting by the South African Marlene DUMAS in which familiar human figures are depicted with a fluid touch, a digitally processed photograph of young girl by Loretta LUX that exudes an ominous air, and a sculpture bathed in animal blood by Marc QUINN. Among the works in these sections are some of the museum's recent acquisitions.
In addition to these portraits, the last two sections examine the "portrait" in a broader sense. In "Portraits of Cities," for example, we present photographs by Naoya HATAKEYAMA taken in Sibuya's underground aqueducts, while in "Portraits of Museum," we focus on the very existence of the museum. We hope you will enjoy these unique expressions by artists who refuse to be limited to the traditional confines of the portrait.