The novel coronavirus is believed to have started spreading across Japan in January of 2020. This “invisible” virus continues to exert a huge influence on our (“visible”) daily lives. In that sense, we have been forced to spend a good deal of time thinking about the visible and invisible.

The theme of the Collection 3 exhibition is derived from the photographer Yoneda Tomoko’s Between Visible and Invisible. In this series, Yoneda endeavors to create new images by using the visible medium of photography to present us with the invisible entities of history and memory as they relate to people. In the past, many artists have made similar attempts to deal, either directly or indirectly, with the theme of visibility.

This edition of the collection exhibition is divided into two sections based on the keywords of “visible” and “invisible.” First, in “History / Memory / Story / Time,” we examine how artists have expressed the invisible in these four categories. Then, in “Behind the Image,” we search for the underlying meaning of an image as expressed through a motif. In the approximately 80 works in the exhibition, we consider what we can see in the works as well as the unseen things that the artists are trying to show us.

Artists:
Tomoko YONEDA, Oscar TUAZON, Danh VO, Atsuko TANAKA, Saori AKUTAGAWA(MADOKORO), Mike KELLY, Felix GONZALEZ-TORRES, Hiroshi SUGIMOTO, Chiyuki SAKAGAMI, Ute LINDNER, Karin SANDER, Tony OURSLER, Ken KITANO, Miyako ISHIUCHI, Joseph KOSUTH, Beom KIM, Yuki ONODERA, Andreas GURSKY, Thomas DEMAND, Laurie SIMMONS, Cindy SHERMAN, Yasumasa MORIMURA, Wolfgang TILLMANS, Anri SALA, Dan FLAVIN, Yoshihiro SUDA, Noe AOKI

• Organized by The National Museum of Art, Osaka
• Sponsored by Daikin Foundation for Contemporary Arts