Japan Foundation Travelling Exhibition

SHARAKU

Interpreted by Japan's Contemporary Artists

12.11-12.12, 2014

11:00-18:00 (Tue.-Sun.)

Venue: Zurab Tsereteli Museum of Modern Art

Address: 27, Rustaveli Avenue

This traveling exhibition, "Sharaku lnterpreted by Japan's Contemporary Artists," takes as its theme Toshusai Sharaku, known throughout Japan and the world for his bust portraits of Kabuki actors, and presents posters, paintings and three dimensional works by today's artists as they freely interpret this foremost master of the ukiyo-e print. This exhibition is made up of three sections: "Reproductions of Sharaku," "Sharaku in Graphic Art," and "Homage to Sharaku."

Sharaku himself was an extremely puzzling person, and it is as if a veil obscures all details about his personal history and the background of his works. His series of actor portraits, with their astringent, purely individualistic expression have a sense of universality about them, and many in the world have seen these works at least once. The present exhibition experiments with the individual re-interpretations of Sharaku by twenty-eight Japanese graphic designers and eleven artists who stand at the other extreme from Sharaku, an artist active in Edo (present day Tokyo) some two hundred years ago.

Each of these works is redolent with pliant concept and firm expression. The rich approach and personal interpretation of each of these participant artists faced with Sharaku are not only a reconfirmation of the avant garde quality and fascination of this unusual ukiyo-e artist, they also provide ample demonstration of the interesting resonance that exists between ukiyo-e, graphic design and contemporary art.

 (from forward of the Japan Foundation)

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