Yasumasa Morimura in "M’s Gift of the Sea: Auto-Mythology"

The Artizon Museum in Tokyo will present Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection×Morimura Yasumasa M’s Gift of the Sea: Auto-Mythology, an exhibition of works by Yasumasa Morimura and Shigeru Aoki.

Jam Sessions are joint performances by the Ishibashi Foundation Collection and contemporary artists. For their second session, the museum welcomes Yasumasa Morimura. Since 1985, when he produced a self-portrait photograph in which he had dressed himself to resemble van Gogh’s self-portrait, Morimura has continued to create “self-portrait-ish works” in which he disguises himself as the person in a painting or photograph, choosing sources from diverse periods and cultures and recreates it, adding his own interpretations.

Morimura has long had an interest in the works of Aoki Shigeru in the Ishibashi Foundation Collection. For this Jam Session, Morimura addresses A Gift of the Sea (1904) anew, head on. He gives shape to the history of the many changes in Japanese culture, politics, and thought since the Meiji period, when Aoki created that work, in his own Morimura-style A Gift of the Sea-M’s Gift of the Sea. He has elevated his ardent feelings for Aoki into a new series of works. This exhibition will consist of about ten works by Aoki from the collection and about sixty works by Morimura. Of them, more than fifty are new works – photographs and videos of Morimura dressing himself to resemble Aoki’s self-portraits and depictions of characters from A Gift of the Sea, plus studies and dioramas, Morimura created for this exhibition.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit the Artizon Museum's website.