90th Anniversary KURAMATA Shiro Exhibition Cahier

Schedule: December 13 [Fri.] - December. 28 [Sat.] 2024
11:00 - 19:00
※Gallery closed Sun., Mon., and national holidays.

*Click images to view in original size

Toki-no-Wasuremono moved from Aoyama to Komagome in 2017, but by coincidence Kuramata Shiro has been born in this city and attended the nearby Showa Elementary School. This year, we will proudly present the “Kuramata Shiro Exhibition” at the place connected to Kuramata Shiro, who celebrates the 90th anniversary of his birth.

“Shiro Kuramata Cahier”, a collection of silkscreen works currently under editions, has been completed up to the fourth collection for now.

This exhibition will mainly feature 10 silkscreens from a fourth collections, as well as “Cabinets de curiosité” and flower vases created for a solo exhibition in Paris in 1989, a cabinet “Imperial" exhibited at the first “Memphis Exhibition” at the Salone del Mobile. Milano in September 1981, “Revolving Cabinet” designed in 1970, and “How High the Moon” created in expanded metal and designed in 1986.

With large-scale retrospectives being held at museums in Tokyo, Toyama, and Kyoto from 2023 to this year (the exhibition period has ended), we will be showing the world of Kuramata Shiro, who is attracting more and more attention nowadays.

■Shiro KURAMATA
In the late 1960s Kuramata became a global designer known for his innovative works. These include many pieces which use a mix of diverse mediums including acrylic, glass, aluminum, and steel mesh. He was born in Tokyo in 1934. He attended the Tokyo Metropolitan Kogei High School and began work at Teikoku Kuzai in 1953. From 1953 to 1956 he studied at Kuwasawa Design Research Center, Department of Living Design, and in 1957 moved to Mie Prefecture to work in advertising, creating window displays. In 1956 he began his own office, Kuramata Design. In 1967 he gained attention after collaborating with Tadanori Yokoo on an interior design project.

From around this time, he started to use the acrylic that he would favor for the rest of his life, creating transparent, weightless works emulating that cloating space of everyday life. Kuramata gained international recognition with his 1970 series "Furniture in Irregular Forms". He was awarded the Mainichi Design Prize in 1972. In 1981 he participated in an exhibition in Memphis set up by Ettore Sottssas Jr., showing works as part of a new Italian design movement alongside Arata Isozaki and Michael Graves. He was awarded the French Order of Culture in 1990. He suffered from heart failure in 1991 and passed away at the age of 56.

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