MAM Project 030 x MAM Digital: Yamauchi Shota

Dec 1 - Mar 26

“MAM Digital” refers to all the programs provided by the Mori Art Museum, utilizing digital media and their platforms. This program is the first attempt to hold “MAM Digital” in a real exhibition space as part of the “MAM Project” exhibition series that showcases contemporary art in all its diversity.

As part of the generation that has grown up with a post-1995, internet version of reality, Shota Yamauchi (born 1992 in Gifu, currently based in Kanagawa) has been making attempts by myriad means to illuminate the relationship between self and world, and rifts between the world as he perceives it, and as it is. Employing various expressive media, from video to sculpture, installation, and performance, Yamauchi skillfully switches between clay animation, chroma key, 3DCG, 3D printing, VR, and motion capture technologies. His works are distinguished not only by a technology-driven pursuit of novelty but by the desire to express raw physicality and the complexity of quintessentially human emotions, contradictory feelings, and situations.

The Planet of Faces, a newly-commissioned work for this exhibition, is an online gaming-format video installation modified in real-time. People can participate in the work on-site via tablet, or access it on a dedicated website from anywhere via PC or smartphone. Players answer a series of questions resembling those of psychological testing to spawn an avatar in the form of their own face, morphing in a clay-like fashion. This is then uploaded to a server to join other faces congregating on a planet in the work, where they react to each other, generating various dramas. The resulting planet made up of multiple faces constantly in flux will be joined in the Mori Art Museum gallery by a 3D sculpture of Yamauchi’s face, rendered as an island. Thus this work that exists in both the digital and IRL realms will continue to change throughout the show, in Yamauchi’s words as a “planet where right and wrong, beautiful and ugly cohabit, at times rejoicing, at times sad, at times angry.”

Opening Hours

• Open: 10:00 - 22:00


• Until 22:00 on January 3 and March 21


• Tuesdays closing at 17:00

Fee

Weekdays: Adults ¥1800, University & High School Students ¥1200, Age 4–Junior High Students ¥600, 65 & Up ¥1500

Weekends and Public Holidays: Adults ¥2000, University & High School Students ¥1300, Age 4–Junior High Students ¥700, 65 & Up ¥1700

Location

Mori Art Museum
53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo

Access

3 minute walk from exit 1C at Roppongi Station on the Hibiya line, 6 minute walk from exit 3 at Roppongi Station on the Toei Oedo line; From JR Shibuya Station, take the Toei bus and get off at Roppongi Hills