Roppongi Art Night 2022’s advance exhibition program is held at various locations in Roppongi from September 3, two weeks prior to the opening of the main festival. By extending the exhibition period this year, we hope to create an opportunity for more people to enjoy Roppongi Art Night.

“HIWADROME TYPE ε” is a 5-meter-tall sculptural work constructed of about 60 stacked wheelchairs, interlaced with LED lights and metal structures. The entire piece is painted in monochrome, and, when illuminated, the whole sculpture appears as a giant mass of light. Hiwa expresses his own disability by using the wheelchair as a subject in his work in an effort to transform their value, or perhaps reinterpret their context, thereby creating a distinctive presentation.

“Tokyo’s Landscape” is a work composed of the fish-shaped soy sauce bottles frequently seen in Japanese bento. The individual bottles are filled with many different colors of water and are patterned after people living in today’s world, and by assembling a huge mass of them together, the work expresses a state of crowding and its resulting behaviors. Covered in multicolored soy sauce bottles, this work reflects the rich individualities and personalities of the viewers, while simultaneously burying this diversity in the throngs of crowds.

A variety of locations such as Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown will hold exhibitions of artworks inspired by the metropolis of Tokyo and the city of Roppongi, both past and present. This work will comprise the results of a discussion delving into the nuances of translation in artworks that incorporate both English and Japanese. The act of translating the meanings or mental images conveyed by words and characters often falls short in some way, and these moments of disconnect will be identified and presented as artwork.

The human brain relies on sense of sight for 80% of the information it receives from the body’s sensory organs. In the present day, masks have become ingrained in our lives, leaving only half of our face discernible and forcing our bodies to make up for this by activating other sensory organs in our attempts to recognize other people. For example, if our visual information was reduced to 50%, then what other senses would supplement the remaining half, and how would our view of the world change?
The symbolic collage being created is themed to the sixth sense.

Two sites of differing scale and scenery, the Giott House building and the facade of West Walk South in Roppongi Hills, are covered with a motif adapted from traditional Taiwanese lattice windows in the pattern of coins.
The lattice motif functions as a screen that encourages the experience of “looking,” while the coin pattern speaks of economic exchange. By conflating the act of looking and economic exchange, “Windows” seeks to reflect on our contemporary culture of visual consumption by way of the two sites in Roppongi and their respective activities of nightlife and (window) shopping.

For this artwork in Roppongi, Harada first rendered the Roppongi cityscape within the virtual world of her computer, then translated the world as seen from that virtual setting into physical artwork. In addition, she’ll be incorporating element of optical illusion that she has been using since 2018, so that viewers will experience unusual distortions as they shift their vantage point. Beyond viewing through the naked eye, when the works are seen through a mobile device, the strange sensation blurring reality and fiction will become further pronounced. In this way, the artist pursues to create works to encourage viewers moving back and forth between the reality and illusion.

This vibrant artist, who is active in the world of street art, will present a new large-scale painting created for specifically for this event. The exhibition will take place in a vacant space that once housed a convenience store, and the artist in this work will question human existence in a consumer society. You’ll be able to feel the dark humor that is central to this artist’s practice.

Installed by the Roppongi Shopping District Promotional Association, the smart streetlights will display outstanding works from the Roppongi Photo Contest and Roppongi Designers Flag Contest on their digital screens.

A variety of locations such as Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown will hold exhibitions of artworks inspired by the metropolis of Tokyo and the city of Roppongi, both past and present. This work will comprise the results of a discussion delving into the nuances of translation in artworks that incorporate both English and Japanese. The act of translating the meanings or mental images conveyed by words and characters often falls short in some way, and these moments of disconnect will be identified and presented as artwork.

Two sites of differing scale and scenery, the Giott House building and the facade of West Walk South in Roppongi Hills, are covered with a motif adapted from traditional Taiwanese lattice windows in the pattern of coins.
The lattice motif functions as a screen that encourages the experience of “looking,” while the coin pattern speaks of economic exchange. By conflating the act of looking and economic exchange, “Windows” seeks to reflect on our contemporary culture of visual consumption by way of the two sites in Roppongi and their respective activities of nightlife and (window) shopping.

This installation is comprised of over 10,000 stick-shaped balloons, the same type that are often carried by sports spectators. The balloons are formed into the shape of a wormhole, and with the natural current of the wind, they tap against each other and create the sound of applause. In addition to expressing the interconnected motions of people living in the same era and the “joy of living in this time together,” the work also embodies a feeling of encouragement for people living in the “present.”

A person lives inside of the screen. No one knows where they’re from. They can only be reached for a few seconds at a time… Installed in the form of the sanitizer dispensers that we now notice on a daily basis, this new type of video playback equipment will be placed/exhibited at various sites throughout Roppongi Art Night. If you come across one of these, be sure not to avert your eyes while using the sanitizer.

This work imagines the beginnings of the universe. The jet-black object evokes the nothingness that exists in the prelude to everything, resembling a portal opening suddenly into another dimension. Circling around the work, phantom images of buildings and trees will flicker in the mirrors at the base of your feet and accumulate together with the void-like object, leading to a mysterious visual and sensory art experience.

This wall expresses gender in many colors through a diverse range of materials. Beneath our skin runs colorful blood – “Polychromatic Skin” is a series of artworks that break through and liberate us from the unconscious stereotypes that stand in the way of freedom and peace embodied by gender. Race, religion, age, gender, national borders… we already hold the means to break through any and all barriers and connect to one another.

This floorlight installation is inspired by the fields of rice that shimmer in gold and sway in the wind at the end of summer. Equipped with motion sensors and solenoids, the heads of rice will begin to sway and illuminate with LED lights when approached by visitors. As people move away, the light and swaying motion gently quiet down. This artwork received the inaugural Lexus Design Award and has been displayed at invitational exhibitions in cities around the world including Milan, New York, Paris, Dubai, London, and Frankfurt, but this marks its premiere to the Japanese public.

The Art Night Café, which begins on September 13 (Tue), will once again hold an exhibition themed to outsider art this year, continuing from the success of 2019. Artworks by children will naturally merge into artworks by Morio Matsui, painter of light. “Hearts touched by pureness” traverse any and all boundaries, offering us many ways to co-exist. The future of art is infinite in this new experimental exhibition.

From John Tenniel’s illustrations to Disney’s hand-drawn animated film, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”, artworks by Salvador Dali and Yayoi Kusama inspired by Alice, costumes from ballet performances, and fashion pieces from Vivienne Westwood, this comprehensive exhibition brings together roughly 300 articles from the world of Alice.

This exhibition introduces 140 artworks by 16 domestic and international artists, with works including an installation made of pollen and beeswax, both materials that evoke the essence of life. Nature and humanity, the individual and society, the spiritual world, the everyday routine, and finally life and death – these artworks delve into subjects connected to life and existence, stimulating our power to imagine. Through diverse viewpoints in contemporary art, this exhibition considers how we live in this new era emerging from the pandemic and what “wellbeing” – health in both mind and body – actually means.

●MAM Collection 015: Welcome to the Fairyland – Yanagi Miwa, Odani Motohiko, Yoo Seungho and Nawa Kohei
The land of Senkyo, where immortal hermits dwell, is an iteration of a utopian paradise. The 4 artists in this exhibition invite you to visit this fairyland.

●MAM Screen 016: Cao Fei
Cao Fei is a highly recognized international artist, representative of the generation born after China’s economic reform. Her feature-length film Nova (2019) will be shown.

●MAM Research 009: Imagining Justice – Asian American Art Movements
This exhibition introduces the wide-ranging cultural practices, artworks, and projects by Asian American artists and musicians who have been active from the 1960s onward, in a validation of the momentous role that art can achieve.