"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.

Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum is pleased to present “Summer Villa: The Sculptures, Drawings, and Prints of Katsura Funakoshi in Art Deco Space.” Katsura Funakoshi was born in Morioka, Japan in 1951. He studied sculpture at Tokyo Zokei University and graduate school at Tokyo University of the Arts (the former name: Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music). In the 1980s he began carving human figures out of camphor wood and partially coloring them. After many domestic shows, his work appeared in major international exhibitions, including the 1988 Venice Biennale and Documenta IX in 1992, establishing a reputation both here and abroad for his fresh approach to figurative sculpture. Funakoshi went on to cultivate new territories of sculptural expression, partially deforming his figures in a solo exhibition of 2003-2004 and further developing these forms to create the enigmatic, androgynous Sphinx series, begun in 2006. This exhibition introduces the challenging Sphinx series, including new pieces, as well as a selection of the best work from each previous period of the artist’s career. To Funakoshi, drawings and prints are important modes of creative expression in their own right on the same level as his sculpture. His drawings are not just studies for sculpture but comprise a world that is complete in itself. In his prints, which he began making as a student in England in 1987, he employs a variety of techniques, including drypoint, aquatint, lithography, and woodcut, to produce freely expressive artworks that are not subordinate to the sculpture. This exhibition gives equal attention to all three forms of expression to provide a fuller understanding of the artist. A particular point of interest on this occasion is the encounter between the Art Deco space of the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum and the work of Funakoshi. The distinctively decorated rooms of the museum, quite different from the “white cube” galleries of most museums, will come together with Funakoshi’s sculptures, drawings, and prints to create a rich tapestry, a rare space and time that cannot be experienced anywhere else. The museum will be transformed into a summer villa filled with magical surprises.

Who left the first trace? When the sumerians engraved cuneiform letters onto clay tablets 5000 years ago, the thoughts and feelings, art and science of humanity were imbued with eternal life.The arts and cultures born of 'writing', man's most pivotal invention, reveal traces of a transmission between the past to the future, the individual to the masses. The vestige on stage at 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT etch new traces onto the modern consciousness. After literally walking the earth, Katsumi Asaba invites us to be eyewitness to various shades of universal expression. Related events: "Whispered Prayers" pre-event June 28th (Sat) 17:00- Katsumi Asaba (Japanese) Opening・Relay Talk July 20th (Sun) 14:00- Katsumi Asaba, Jissei Omine, Kazunari Hattori and Naoki Ishikawa (Japanese) Special Talk August 3rd (Sun) 14:00- Katsumi Asaba and Seigow Matsuoka (Japanese) Workshop August 23rd (Sat) 13:00- Workshop by Katsumi Asaba (Japanese)

Can fiction become fact? French artist Hugues Reip invites you on a “fantastic voyage” to parallel worlds. Reip will construct worlds of the imagination by means of his own, totally unexpected multi-media works and those of ten Japanese and French artists he has selected. [Image: "Eden" (2003)]

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]

Fuku Akino (1908-2001) used vibrant colors to portray with vigor the landscape of India and the people living there. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of her birth, the exhibition follows the footstep of her entire career through around 90 representative paintings, together with sketches and original drawings for picture books. Special Talk Guests: Fujimori Terunobu (architect of Akino Fuku Museum), Akino Hitoshi (son of the artist) Date: September 12th (Fri) 13:30-15:30 Location: Hayama Auditorium Capacity: 70 people. Admission free Booking by FAX required. Please send FAX with your name, address, Tel/Fax number to: 046-875-2968 by September 5th (Fri). [Image: "Crimson Dress" (1938) Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art]

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.

The 19th century French painter Camille Corot (1796-1875) created numerous lyric landscape and figural paintings, and today his oeuvre continues to fascinate artists and art aficionados throughout the world. In spite of Corot’s fame and achievement, there have been a surprisingly few major exhibitions focusing on Corot in Japan or overseas. This exhibition centers on the important group of major works by Corot in the Musee du Louvre as it reexamines the fascination and secrets of Corot’s arts. Works on display range from Corot's earliest creations to his late period, encompassing early Romantic style landscape paintings, study works created in Italy, realist works, and his late period works with their uniquely hazy, poetic expression that developed into images of memories and dream-like visions. This major gathering of Corot's works also features the finely detailed figural paintings he created at different times during his life. In addition to works by Corot, this exhibition marks the first experiment worldwide in presenting a group of works by artists who were deeply influenced by Corot, ranging in style and date from the Impressionists through the Cubists. By no means did Corot himself emphasize the revolutionary nature of his own arts which had such a massive impact on art history. It is our great hope that this exhibition, with its superb selection of more than 110 paintings and prints by Corot, Renoir, Sisley, Braque and others, will allow visitors to fully experience the resonant modernist sensibility that underscores Corot’s works.