This show presents works in which artists' emotions seem to have been teased out by embracing the fragile quality intrinsic to drawing. Featured are sixteen artists from Asia, Europe and the Middle East including Nalini Malani, Leiko Ikemura, Yoshitomo Nara, Manuel Ocampo, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Ugo Untro, Mitsu-Sen, Naoyuki Tsuji, Amal Kenawy, and Chiyuki Sakagami. Exhibits include installations and animations. Artist Talk -Manuel Ocampo + Pinaree Sanpitak + Mitsu-Sen Gallery Talk August 26th (Tue), 14:00-16:00 Location: exhibition space No reservation needed, admission ticket required to enter. -Naoyuki Tsuji September 13th (Sat), 14:00-16:00 Location: Auditorium (basement level) No reservation needed (capacity 150 people), admission ticket required to enter. Symposium "Considering Drawing, between Techne and Art" September 27th (Sat) 13:00-16:00 Location: Auditorium (basement level) No reservation needed (capacity 150 people), free. [Image: Nara Yoshitomo "Untitled" (2008) Photo: Kei Okano (c) the artist]

TBS has been witness to the recent boom in Akasaka. Following the successful opening of Akasaka Sacas as an entertainment complex in March 2008, we continue to challenge ourselves with new ideas on what we can do to fully utilize the new Akasaka area and how to give something back to our home. Today, we are proud to announce that we will be hosting Akasaka Art Flower 08. With the support of a broadcasting station and the participation of several contemporary artists, our aim is to introduce people to the unique charm and fascination of art and to realize the hidden potential of Akasaka. This goal has now become the theme of this event and we believe that Akasaka Art Flower 08 will help Akasaka to be recognized as a new cultural center of Tokyo. We also believe that Akasaka Art Flower 08 will be a great opportunity for us to think once again about how broadcasting stations can co-exist with the community and art. TBS

Tomoko Yoneda is an internationally active photographer currently based in London. Last year, she participated in the 52nd Venice Biennale. In this exhibition, she presents her latest series of works to the public for the first time, as well as her representative series Scene and Between Visible and Invisible, and After the Thaw, which may be considered an extension of the Scene series. Also included is Topographical Analogy, a series created early in her career in which her signature style as a photographer is clearly evident. This solo exhibition is the first one to present a comprehensive overview of her work to date. As a photographer, Yoneda is loyal to photography as a medium for observing and recording a subject. In her continuing series Scene (1998-), the photographs she takes are seemingly of mountains, beaches and urban scenes. These sites, however, are actually the settings of historical events that link to collective memories in terms of nation, race and society, such as the former battlefields of the First and Second World War. The significance of each place, however, is apparent only from the title; what the picture allows to be disclosed is merely a banal landscape. Monuments are often erected in public spaces to allow the memory of a historical event or person to be shared. Such "memory-evoking devices" are either missing or hard to find at the sites depicted in Scene. Nonetheless, these places are indelibly etched by the historical moment or memory. This way of "seeing the invisible" may be said to be the defining trait of Yoneda's photography. When viewers become aware of this, they may begin to sense something strangely disquieting in the tranquil scenes presented to them. They may also rediscover through Yoneda's work an appreciation for the power of the camera lens to express individual points of view. [Image: "Freud's Glasses - Viewing a text by Jung II" (1998), gelatin silver print (from Between Visible and Invisible）©Tomoko Yoneda Courtesy of Shugo Arts]

"Annette Messager: The Messengers" is the first major solo exhibition for leading French artist Annette Messager to be held in Japan. Painting, photography, articles, objects assembled from found objects, words, stuffed animals, plush toys, fabrics, embroidery, thread and knitting: these and many other objects from everyday life have found their way into the art of Annette Messager since she began working in the 1970s. Keeping her work based firmly in everyday life, Messager explores the various dichotomies and contradictions inherent in the human condition: religion and secularity, humor and fear, love and pain, woman and man, animal and human, childhood and adulthood, life and death, surface and substance. Springing perhaps from meditations on impulsive collecting or the body, from games with plush toys, or from clever wordplay, Messager's art possesses both a childlike innocence and a brutality that afford multiple readings. With a flair for incorporating wry humor into even the most direct confrontations with negative aspects of human endeavor, Messager is able to move and delight people of all generations. Charming and fantastical, and at times taking strange and mysterious forms, Messager's art works are "messengers" that talk directly to our souls. This exhibition was originally shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and has toured to Finland and Korea. The roughly 30 works on show include Casino, for which the artist won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2005, and other important works such as articulated-disarticulated.

In addition to its rapid economic growth, China has gained much attention not only for the Beijing Olympics, but also for its contemporary art scene, which has made waves across the world. Since the period of reform and open-door policies dating from the 1970s, China saw new modes of expression emerge that were entirely different from socialist realism. Then, in 1979, the Star Painting Group held an exhibition that set a precedent for a new type of artistic activity whose focus was on the individual characteristics of each artist. Around the mid-1980s, a variety of avant-garde groups formed all over China, leading to the famed "85 Art Movement". Against a backdrop of information flows from Western Europe, these groups of artists took on domestic social themes, expressing them through various media ranging from painting, sculpture, performance and installation. At the beginning of the 1990s, a series of artists gained international attention through the art movements "political pop" and "cynical realism", after which more radical forms of art emerged. Thus, with accompanying globalization movements from 2000 onward, Chinese contemporary art has come to be recognized as a quintessential phenomenon that symbolized the opening up of the nation as well as its booming art market. Showcased at this exhibition are works by both well-established and up-and-coming artists, reflecting 20 years of Chinese contemporary art history in their individual ways. [Image: Fang Lijun "Series 2 No.3" (1992) oil on canvas, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Collection]

Kimsooja was born in 1957 in Taegu, South Korea. After she studied painting at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, she went to Paris on a French government scholarship to attend the Lithography Studio at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. In 1992, she went to New York as an artist-in-residence with P.S.1's International Studio Program. Since then, she has been working internationally, taking part in the Istanbul Biennale in 1997, the "Cities on the Move" exhibition from 1997-2000, the Venice Biennale in 1999, 2001, 2005, and 2007. Her solo exhibition traveled through various venues from 2003 to 2004, starting with the Lyon Contemporary Art Museum. She also held a solo exhibition at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid in 2006. Kimsooja uses photography, installation, performance and video as her chosen media. In her installations, she often uses colorful traditional Korean fabrics used as bedsheets for newlywed couples in Korea. The act of “sewing” has a very important meaning to her. Especially in Korea, "sewing" is seen as a women's job and referred to as a symbol of femininity. Now, as an itinerant artist, she considers herself a sort of needle attempting to stitch through, and together, different people, societies, and the world. "Bottari" is one of Kimsooja's representative works. It was made out of a Korean bedsheet which is used to wrap old pieces of cloth. In Korea, wrapping things when people move or rearrange their personal belongings is a traditional custom. Another important idea underlying her work is the relation between yin and yang. The two do not necessarily oppose, but rather complement each other. Her works use Korean fabrics to express many different manifestations of yin and yang - such as man and woman, life and death, joy and sadness, and prosperity and decline. Kimsooja's newest work entitled "A Mirror Woman : The Sun & The Moon" is a video work in which she shot the sun, the moon and the ocean in Goa, India. The sun and the moon, as well as the high and low tide, are perfect examples of yin and yang relationships. Also, the sun, moon and ocean control in some way all lives on Earth. This work is a dynamic piece that deals with nature. We also plan to show her "bottari" installation.

Video technology has left a deep impact on visual culture. Video artists like Nam June Paik who came to prominence in the 1960s drew attention to the possibilities of video art that were completely dissimilar to qualities found in film, creating distinctive experimental works. In recent years, video environments that use LCD for example have seen startling technological developments. High-definition images that used to be unimaginable are now a reality. This exhibition introduces the work of 14 artists from Japan, China, Europe and America who are exploring new frontiers in video art. What these artists have in common is the rich, painterly world that materializes in their work - time intervenes in the "painting", video image and painting seem to occupy a space of similar quality, a fantastical world where temporal-based and spatially-oriented art merge together. The variety of these works is astounding: from LCD displays in the shape of a folding screen that visualize faint movements in the landscapes contained within (Hiroshi Senju), experiments in alternating between the space of a tableau and the world of the video image, taking Vermeer as the theme (Yasumasa Morimura), slow-motion works that exquisitely synchronize a painted surface to music (Brian Eno), and animation works that employ ink drawings (Qiu Anxiong). Cafe and gallery talk August 23rd (Sat) 16:00- With Dominic Layman (exhibiting artist) [interpretation included] Venue: Cafe Chambre Clair, 2F Fee: ¥1500 Limited to 35 persons. Please reserve by email or fax with your name and contact details. Talk event September 20th (Sat) 14:00- Lecturer: Akira Tatehata (director, National Museum of Art, Osaka) Limited to 50 persons (tokens will be distributed to those holding valid ticket stubs for the day) Artist/gallery talk Venue: 2F exhibition room, B1 exhibition room From 14:00- on each day September 12th (Fri) Chiyuki Kojima, Ryuta Takano September 26th (Fri) Miwa Yanagi Anyone with a valid ticket stub for the day can participate.

Trace Elements: Spirit and Memory in Japanese and Australian Photomedia features work by Australian artists Philip Brophy, Jane Burton, Alex Davies, Genevieve Grieves and Sophie Kahn together with Japanese practitioners Teiji Furuhashi, Seiichi Furuya, Chie Matsui, Lieko Shiga and Kazuna Taguchi. An exhibition that encompasses both the traditions and the innovations of photomedia practice, from black and white photography to interactive video installation, Trace Elements considers the ways in which contemporary artists are addressing the intrinsic relationship of photography to time, memory and the metaphysical association of the medium to phantasmagoria and the semblance of lived experience. Relating Programmes Open Forum "Part Past Part Present Part Fiction: Trace Elements" July 19th (Sat) 14:00-17:00 Conference Room (1 and 2) on the 7th floor in Tokyo Opera City bldg. Capacity: 180 seats Language: Japanese and English with successive translation. Admission: Free Please check out the museum's website for more information and other related events.

Part of the gallery, plus library, mini theater and lounge will be used as "ICC Open Space", a free communication space open to the public. ICC has consistently aimed at providing a space for the free appreciation of intersections between art and technology, developments in research, networks and archives through its "corners" and zones", as well as many works of art. Various materials, videos and recordings pertaining to the history of the ICC's activities are also available for reference purposes. A cafe, shop and rest space are also provided, allowing viewers to create their own encounters and exchanges with cutting edge technologies, means of communication and modes of culture. [Image: Hive Corner]