Upcomming / Current Exhibition
Upcomming / Current Exhibition


Seventy Years in Aoyama
It was seventy years ago, in May 1954, that Taro Okamoto established his studio at this location.
It was an important place to him, the site of his parents’ home where he had lived from birth until he moved to Paris. However, when he returned after the war, he found the place covered in wheat fields—his house, his artwork, everything had been lost in the air raids. Taro had no choice but to make a fresh start from literally nothing, but he never lost heart and soon began to make inroads into the postwar Japanese art scene.


‘Premonition’ And That Period
“Art is Magic.” It was the mid-1960s when Taro Okamoto made this pronouncement.
Past Exhibition

A Face is A Universe
A face is a universe.
A face is self, it is other, it is all.
The eyes are placed in the exact center. They are holes, one with the universe, allowing us to interact with it.
Every possible layer of beauty in the world possesses various faces and also eyes.
Round eyes, sharp eyes, sunken eyes…all types of eye glare, challenge, and confirm absolutes in each other.
The universe of a single face contains countless other faces, all with gleaming eyes.
They possess an indescribable feeling of reality .

Art in Daily Life
‘Carp streamers…they’re great. A giant fish swimming through the sky. What great imagination. They are not the creation of a single artist. They represent an image that emerged quite naturally and is shared by the ordinary people. I want to spread it around the world.’
With this thought in mind, Taro Okamoto set about making his own carp streamer. Large googly eyes, scales applied in primary colors and a lively, dynamic form. It is typical of Taro’s work—a carp streamer that looks as if it is alive.

Confronting Eyes
Taro Okamoto started his career as a ‘western-style’ painter, but the subjects of his paintingsdiffered greatly from those commonly used by other western-style artists. This is because he did not use any of the usual western-style genres, such as landscapes, portraits, still-lifes or nudes.
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Taro Okamoto’s Prints
This is how Taro Okamoto thought about art and he employed every possible channel to try and bring art into the lives of the people. His range of expression included a huge range of genres, from the Tower of the Sun to tiepins. One of the characteristics of his work was that he engaged positively with mass production to create large numbers of works, such as: tables, chairs, clocks, lighters, bags, carp streamers, skis, cups, ties, scarfs, playing cards, etc. His pièce de résistance was a ‘face glass’ that came free with a bottle of whiskey. Those around him were very against him producing this, saying it would harm his career, but he overrode their objections and was happy to create this kind of giveaway product.
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The Original Image of Japan
Taro Okamoto was a person who continually asked the question, ‘What is Japan?’ Having decided to leave Paris and return home to fight for Japan, Taro had a fateful encounter one day in November 1951.
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Life in Five Hundred Million Years’ Time — Yōichirō Kawaguchi: beyond AI
‘Let’s imagine what it will be like five hundred million years into the future, a time when humankind may no longer exist.’ So says Yōichirō Kawaguchi, a pioneer computer graphics artist who has been active on the world stage since the seventies. This is not simply a fancy.
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Art of the Sun—Taro Okamoto’s Public Art—
Art is like the sun. The sun provides limitless light and heat.
Even if you have been sunbathing, the sun doesn’t put out its hand and say, ‘Hey, that was lovely and warm, how about giving me some money?’ does it? Art is like the sun. That is what Tarō Okamoto thought.

Living Moment by Moment —Tarō Okamoto and Jazz—
‘In my life I ignore the past and I ignore the future. I live in the present, exploding, moment by moment.’
Neither clinging to the past nor presuming upon the future.
This was the way that Tarō Okamoto lived.

The Road to the Tower of the Sun
In March 2018, the Tower of the Sun was finally reborn. After half a century of neglect the interior has been restored and reincarnated as a permanent exhibition facility.
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