Japanese Exhibition Opens at 52nd Venice Biennale

The Japan Foundation will host a special art exhibition at the Japanese Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale of Art, to be held from June 10 to November 21, 2007.

Featuring works by artist Masao Okabe using his renowned frottage technique, the exhibition is an attempt to consider, from the perspective of art, the possibilities and conditions for carrying humanity's past into the future. Frottage is a method of capturing images and textures by laying paper on an object and rubbing over it with a pencil.

The exhibition centers around 1,400 frottages taken from the platform of the former Ujina train station, previous army assembly area and staging point near the port of Hiroshima, and a 16-meter row of stones from the platform that were exposed to the atomic bomb. Also on display are film negatives of the frottage images in lightboxes, and plant samples embedded in an iron grid covering the walls of the pavilion.

Masao Okabe (the artist who will represent Japan)
(Photo: Chihiro Minato (the commissioner for Japan))