Jiro Takamatsu features in 'Photographic Images and Matter: Japanese Prints of the 1970s' Organised by The Japan Foundation, Cairo

'Photographic Images and Matter: Japanese Prints of the 1970s' is a travelling exhibition of Japanese prints and editions, which opened at Salah Taher gallery in the grounds of the Cairo Opera House in December 2020. The exhibition explores how artists employed myriad printmaking techniques to express the tumult of contemporary Japanese society at the time. 

The exhibition includes significant editions by pioneering Japanese artist Jiro Takamatsu. Kyoji Takizawa, curator of Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts explains how Takamatsu's printmaking influenced the development of a strain of contemporary art which challenged our visual perception of the world. He said, "In the late 1960s, Jiro Takamatsu shifted his focus from the subject of human beings to a quest for things in the outside world as a means of examining our limited ability to perceive the world through the sense of sight. These works exerted a strong influence on Mono-ha and subsequent trends in Japanese art." 

Japan Foundation Cairo Office director Yoo Fukazawa said, “It’s my great pleasure to present a real Japanese fine art exhibition to the Egyptian audience through this distinguished exhibition, as part of our cultural activities, on top of which, presenting a grand exhibition annually, we organise a travelling exhibition on a yearly basis in all countries around the world. Such artworks are part of the Japan Foundation’s own collection. This newly organised travelling exhibition, focuses on print expressions from the 1970s as seen in the works of 14 artists who facilitated the development of the print movement in the world of Japanese contemporary art.”