Japan Retur

The projects show fertile meetings between Danish and Japanese ceramists, textile designers, photographers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths and design companies. Among the projects you will also find a Japanese wallpaper master, a bamboo wicker worker and a bookbinder. The exhibition includes stories about Mid Jutland socks, about the Japanese fascination of the Danish iconic Irma girl, about the long lasting and close ties between a Danish and a Japanese ceramist. Just to mention a few.

The 43 projects have all been part of a special focus on the meeting between Danish and Japanese crafts and design in 2017, initiated by the Danish Arts Foundation. Anne Blond, chairman of The Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Craft and Design Project Funding:
-­‐ With the Japan Retur-­‐exhibition, we get a rare opportunity to understand what the craftsmen and designers who took part in the project, have gained from the cultural exchange. The exhibition demonstrates how important and fruitful it is to facilitate the option for artisans within all fields to seek inspiration and get the opportunity to upgrade and learn new skills, to bring arts and crafts to new levels.


Stories about Japan This wave, this landscape, is made by my hands during a long, dark winter. My wave has dictated its own pace and developed between my hands through many hours of work. This is my reaction towards the accelerating pace of time. It contains the slowness of it, Louise Campbell says about the wave, which is now being re-­‐installed for the exhibition Japan Retur and, like part of the work.

The Repetive Clean by designer Henrik Vibskov, is exhibited for the first time in Denmark since Kanazawa.


The flip side of aesthetics
Japan is known for the aesthetic purity and beauty, and not for the ugly and messy. We most often get the image of a country appreciating skilled craftsmanship to a degree where people mastering traditional craftsmanship are appointed as National treasures.
However, the Japan Retur-­‐exhibition also shows what can be denoted as the flip side of the traditional Japanese culture. The raw and unfinished are presented side by side with the refined and distinguished. The clothes-­‐ and textile designers Siff Pristed and Emilie Carlsen, have photographed Japanese fashion models at the harbour of Tokyo among scrap, rattle and old Japanese harbour-­‐workers without teeth.
Glass designer Maria Koshenkova has studied the Japanese bondage technique Shibari and reproduced it in her glassworks. Designer Øivind Slaatto, registered a wide range of ugly and scrabby aspects also part of Japanese culture -­‐ and learned that the Japanese adore Danish culture and welfare at the same level as we in Denmark admire Japanese design.


An experience richer -- please be informed
The exhibition is accompanied by a dissemination program with guided tours, design talks, lectures and workshops. In November, the audience can attend and participate in the creation of an on-­‐site work in the project R / LOOM by architect Johna Hansen and the weaver Yuko Yokota. And in January, we invite you to another weaving workshop by Rosa Tolnov Clausen, holding the Weaving Kiosk -­‐ an open invitation to weave together with others.
In October, graphic designer and design manager Marie d'Origny Lübecker will tell about her meeting with the Japanese designer Kenya Hara, founder of the Muji department stores. Hara has taught his theory of Ex-­‐formation at the University of Tokyo, thus influencing the upcoming generation of Japanese designers.


Background
In 2017, Denmark and Japan celebrated the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In this context, the Danish Arts Foundation, Committee for Crafts and Design Project Funding_, launched two initiatives: an exhibition in Kanazawa, Japan showing Danish and Japanese design, curated by Danish designer Cecilie Manz, as well as funds for artisans and designers with the desire to exchange knowledge and collaborate with Japanese professionals.
The results, experiences and ideas that have emerged in the wake of this effort are displayed at the Japan Retur-­‐exhibition.


Artist, designer and architecture list:
Aggebo & Henriksen & Yasuko Uozumi, Akiko Kuwahata, Anders Lunderskov, Finn Kilbuck Johansen, Jacob Ulrich, John Bøge, Ken Winther Christensen, Rasmus Fenhann, Søren Risvang Sørensen & Teis Dich Abrahamsen, Anne Black & Akira Minagawa, Anne Fabricius Møller, Anne Mette Hjortshøj & Iwami Shinsuke, Anne Jonstrup Simonsen, Anne Tophøj, Anni Vestergaard & Louise Hold Sidenius, Birgitte Christens, Charlotte Hjorth-Rohde, Ned Cantrell, Emil Borregaard, Emilie Carlsen – FLOCK, Siff Pristed Nielsen – FLOCK, Foreningen Butik for Borddækning, Ibata Katsue & Igata Nobuyuki, Foreningen Butik for Borddækning & Momoo Omuro, Gregory Hamilton Miller, Gurli Elbækgaard, Henrik Vibskov, Ida Wieth, Jakob Ingemansson & Mika Katarina Friis, Jan Machenhauer, Janne K. Hansen & Helen Clara Hemsley, Johanne Jahncke & Rick Gerner, Johna Hansen & Yuko Yokota, Kaori Juzu & Per Suntum, Liv Caroline og Louise Jacobsen, Laura Locher, Line Depping & Jakob Jørgensen, Louise Campbell, Maria Hagerup, Maria Koshenkova, Marie d’Origny Lübecker, Marie Frøhlich, Peter Hiort-Lorenzen, Johannes Foersom, Ane Lykke, Rosa Tolnov Clausen, Sky Lucy Young, Øivind Slaatto, Pernille Snedker Hansen, Tine Wessel, Tora Urup og Yuki Ferdinandsen.

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Danish Arts Foundation, which has also supported all the projects in the exhibition.

The short videos are all in Danish and will be subtitled (in English) asap.