Yokoo Search Party— Lost in the Yokoo Jungle

Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art

This event has ended.

From the scenery of his hometown of Nishiwaki to characters in his favorite books to movies he saw in the theater, Tadanori Yokoo’s childhood experiences have been a source of inspiration to him, manifesting in his art in various forms. One example of this inspiration is the search party of school uniform-wearing adolescents that appears in a novel by Rampo Edogawa. Others are “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, Jules Verne’s book about a diver who roams the ocean, and the jungles and caves from works such as the picture book “Shonen Ojo” (The Boy King) and the movie Tarzan. Yokoo’s works evoke the spirit of youth he still possesses and the senses of adventure and excitement for all things that everyone felt as children. This exhibition shows how the things Yokoo was enraptured with as a child have influenced his work. Presenting actual publications read by Yokoo as a boy and archived materials he used in creating his works, it offers a look at the “spirit of play” at the heart of this artist.

[Related Event]
Lecture “Jungles, Deserts, Snow and Ice: 1,001 Nights of Exploration”
Speaker: Yoshihi Futana (explorer)
Date: Apr. 20 (Sun) 14:00–15:30
Venue: Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art Open Studio
Audience: 100 (first-come basis)
Free with cost of admission to exhibit.

[Image: Tadanori Yokoo “Tarzan (Blue)” (1974), artist’s collection]