Temporary Exhibitions

Film & Video, the Museum’s gallery dedicated to video art and moving image, is hosting Split Second, an exhibition of the oeuvre by British-born, New York-based artist Anthony McCall. McCall’s solid light works occupy a space between sculpture, cinema, drawing, and installation.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are met with a photograph series called Smoke Screen (2017), as well as with one of McCall’s earliest works: Miniature in Black and White (1972), an installation comprised of a carousel slide projector producing images that create negative afterimages on the viewer’s retina.

In the central area of the gallery, visitors discover Split Second Mirror IV (2024), an interactive installation that radically transforms the space around it and befuddles perception through the interplay of artificial fog, mirrors, and the volumes produced by the light projected.

The exhibition focusing on Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959) gathers a selection of his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics, to which we should add My Drawing Room, an installation recreating the artist’s studio.

During his training in Germany, in the 1990s, Nara developed a new style, turning to cartoonish representations of children and animals. Far from being kawaii (Japanese for “cute”), his characters look naughty – at times, even threatening.

Unruly and rebellious, Nara’s works evoke the lyrics and the tunes of the folk and rock songs from the 1950s and 1960s, which accompanied historical events like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. As a matter of fact, some of his characters carry anti-war or anti-nuclear messages.

Nara’s paintings are the result of several layers of paint in subtly varied pigments, which the artist applies meticulously throughout the painting process.