Jessica Beer

Our notions of contemporary Japan, with its perfect control of the most up-to-date technology and its mysteriously untouched realm of ascetically beautiful ceremonies and traditions, are as contradictory as our first impressions of the selection of works by contemporary artists, photographers and designers presented in "Japan Today."

This selection is based on a radically individual choice and a deliberately western perspective and does not pretend to offer a complete survey or a show more representative documentation of contemporary Japanese art. The power of the trenchant works chosen and the tension arising from their refusal to be linked to a harmonious whole aim at defining its fundamental creativity which seems to unmask all prejudice through a peculiar mixture of appropriation and opposition, of wish fullfillment and fleetingness.

(Abstract from Peter Noever) show less