“Now the real work begins”—That’s what Tadanori Yokoo said this February when the Japan Art Academy announced that he had been chosen as a member of its new Architecture and Design category. I wondered why Yokoo, who had declared he was retiring from graphic design to take up painting 43 years ago, had been selected for the field of design, but perhaps this breathed new life into the old-fashioned culture of the over 100-year-old Japan Art Academy.
 
This exhibition will focus on the design work Yokoo did 43 years ago that spans a wide range of fields including literature, theater, music, film, and fashion (from the 1960s to 1980s)—the main reason he was recognized by the Japan Art Academy. But instead of exhibiting completed posters and books, the exhibition will feature the rough sketches, notes of ideas, and drawings that comprise those works, and the illustrations, original pictures, and collages that form the elements of his style. The exhibition will show the parts of the long design process, including paste-ups and color schemes, that go into producing posters and prints. If we were to draw an analogy with Abashiri Bangaichi (“a place in Abashiri without an address”), a prison break film starring Yokoo’s friend Ken Takakura, it is “Yokoo’s work without an address,” in other words an “extra edition” of his work.
 
The materials and works of art are from the Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art collection. The items were organized and stored in around 80 boxes, but before we could actually handle the items, we had to check 18,000-odd photos of the materials, works, and storage status. Then we had to face the mountain of around 2,500 pages of printouts to select the 250 items we would exhibit. Yokoo’s artworks overflowed in a whirlwind of chaos. Undauntedly taking it on made this special exhibition possible.
 
The exhibition space where the extensive sketches, original pictures, paste-ups, and more will be displayed promises to convey the actual process that went into creating his art and provide more of a physical than intellectual experience. It will entice visitors into the realm of Nothingness, like a black hole, where you will be drawn, absorbed, and disappear into his never-before-seen creative space—his super-personal black hole where he continues to produce and work to this day. If you get lost in the vortex of this “place without an address” you may arrive at and encounter the origin and home of Yokoo’s creative style.
 
Yokoo has been featured in three group exhibitions and the following three solo exhibitions at ginza graphic gallery (ggg)—Tadanori Yokoo’s Poster Exhibition (1997), Tadanori Yokoo The First Book Design Exhibition (2012), and Tadanori Yokoo Exhibition (2018). The essence of Yokoo’s graphic design was exhibited in three genres (or chapters): posters, book design, and illustrations. This long-awaited fourth exhibition in Ginza titled, “Tadanori Yokoo My Black Holes,” represents the “extra edition” of his works, the design process. Experience the fourth and final chapter of Tadanori Yokoo’s great graphic design story. However, to Yokoo, this exhibition is merely the process along the way to incompleteness.



"Just as a single day ends incomplete, a person’s life is incomplete.
There are only cycles and Möbius strips.
Complete and incomplete are like the soul and body—two sides of the same coin."   Tadanori Yokoo