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TOKYO. THE MUSEUM of Contemporary Art Tokyo, presents ‘Atsuko Tanaka-The Art of Connecting’ exhibition in collaboration with

The Japan Foundation, the IKON gallery, UK, and Espai D’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain.

In 2012 the world’s eye turns its eye towards Japan’s avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, such as ‘Gutai’ or

‘Experimental Workshop’. Stimulated by Western avant-garde art in the postwar years, Japanese artists decided that they

wanted to create a form of art that ‘nobody had seen before’, and they set about it with a straightforward, yet fresh sensitivity

and overflowing energy. Among them was TANAKA Atsuko who displayed an outstanding and unique talent as a woman

member of the Gutai group. Unlike other Japanese avant-garde women artists of the time, such as ONO Yoko or KUSAMA Yayoi,

she did not move to New York in search of expressional freedom and achieve fame there, instead TANAKA remained in Japan

where she experimented with her own forms of expression. In the ‘Documenta 12’ exhibition in 2007 her ‘Electric Dress’

attracted great attention and then a large-scale work of hers, from the collection of MOMA, was featured in an exhibition in 2010,

her reputation growing like a ‘late-blooming flower’.

A piece of cloth flapping in the wind provided the inspiration for her ‘Bell’ installation, in which sound travels through space,

while the flashing of a neon tube provided the idea for the ‘Electric Dress’; using immaterial sounds or light to produce

metaphorical expressions, there was nothing to equal TANAKA’s rich and active imagination during the fifties. Her work stood

out in strong contrast to the other members of the Gutai movement who restricted themselves solely to the direct relationship of

objects. Today, when the whole world is connected through a network, her ‘networking painting’, in which she represented

flashing light bulbs as circles and patiently connecting them with lines, can be described as prophetic. The ‘Art of

Connecting’ refers not to a single picture, but to the numerous works that fill the space and begin to synchronize with each other.

TANAKA Atsuko continues to transmit her message towards the present day.

TANAKA Atsuko’s (1932-2005) first abstract work was a collage entitled ‘Calendar’ (1953) and subsequent to this, she joined

KANAYAMA Akira in the avant-garde group ‘Gutai’ that was founded by YOSHIHARA Jiro. With her 'Work (Bell)’ (1955) in which

twenty electric bells were rigged to ring consecutively, her ‘Electric Dress’ (1957), which consisted of one hundred

fluorescent tubes and ninety light bulbs, painted in nine colors of enamel paint and worn like a garment, etc., her installations

and performance works stood out for their originality, even among the Gutai. She even tried to express these experiments

through painting, substituting the light bulbs and wires of her ‘Electric Dress’ with circles and lines, producing a huge

number of variations on this theme over the course of her life. It appears that sometimes the path she took led to extremely

radical developments and at others, simple repetition, but in actual fact, all were necessary steps in her search for innovation

and all her works new experiments connecting with each other.

This long-awaited exhibition presents a comprehensive retrospective of her career, containing approximately one hundred

works, including reconstructions of her representative works, ‘Work (Bell)’ and ‘Electric Dress’, that were reproduced under

her personal guidance. It will also include a lot of reference work: contemporary film of her performances, previously

unpublished sketchbooks and drawings.

(Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)