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|On Friday, 20 February at 6:00 PM, the Crocetti Museum in Rome will host the opening of the group exhibition A Space for Exchanges and Connections. Forms of Japanese Contemporary Art in the Italian Peninsula, curated by Alberto Dambruoso and Mayumi Miyazawa, featuring works by Nobushige Akiyama, Yuriko Damiani, Uemon Ikeda, Machiko Kodera, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Kyoji Nagatani, Yoshin Ogata, Naoya Takahara, Sahoko Takahashi, and Kan Yasuda.
The exhibition project is part of the celebrations marking the 160th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Italy and Japan and is dedicated to contemporary Japanese artists who have chosen Italy as a privileged place for education, research, and creative synthesis. The initiative offers an ideal opportunity to celebrate the profound cultural dialogue and the artistic core of the fruitful relations between the two countries, in the spirit of art and aesthetic research, through the participation of ten internationally renowned Japanese artists who have developed their artistic paths in Italy while maintaining strong ties with their cultural roots.
The exhibition forms part of the celebrations marking the 160th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Italy and Japan and is dedicated to contemporary Japanese artists who have chosen Italy as a privileged site for education, research, and creative synthesis. It offers a meaningful occasion to reflect on the deep cultural dialogue and artistic vitality that have long shaped relations between the two countries, through the work of ten internationally renowned Japanese artists who have developed their practice in Italy while remaining firmly connected to their cultural roots.
The exhibition presents artistic practices ranging from painting to ceramics, from installation to performance and sculpture, also including large-format works and projects on paper. The result is a rich plurality of artistic journeys that explore experimentation, memory, identity, and contemporaneity. The exhibition evokes the simplicity of existence: in the artists’ poetics, creation does not reside in addition or subtraction, but in the power of contemplation, understood as an act capable of revealing the sublime not as a distant ideal, but as an authentic presence.
The Venanzo Crocetti Foundation maintains a deep connection with Japan, rooted in the figure of the Master after whom it is named. Since the 1970s, Crocetti recognized in the Land of the Rising Sun a fertile ground for inspiration and dialogue, exhibiting in Tokyo, Osaka, Sendai, Sapporo, and other cultural centers, thereby consolidating long-lasting artistic relationships. Among the symbolic works of this dialogue is the monumental equestrian group The Young Knight of Peace, whose international journey began in Hiroshima in 1989 as a message of harmony among peoples. After Italy, Japan is the country that hosts the largest number of Crocetti’s works, preserved in major museums and significant public spaces.
The project has been realized by the Venanzo Crocetti Foundation with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Culture and under the patronage of the Embassy of Japan in Italy, the Italy–Japan Foundation, and the Japanese Institute of Culture in Rome.