Yamamoto Yukyo: Hypo-Exchange in the Priceless Museum

In his practice, Yamamoto Yukyo utilizes the materials and techniques from his background in nihonga (Japanese-style painting) to create installations with tarpaulin sheets and line drawings of rice grains. His series of works using one-yen coins is an attempt to fuse the micro and macro, connecting a coin that is small yet part of everyday life with something far larger: the relationship between money in contemporary society and works of art.

This exhibition features seven works, including large new frottage pieces made by rubbing pencils on hemp paper laid over one-yen coins arranged in the shape of nihonga paintings in the Kyoto City Museum of Art collection and portraits of those famous artists. The sizes of the frottage portraits are determined by the estimated price of the original painter’s work if it were put up for sale on the art market today; the higher the value, the larger and sharper the image. Yamamoto’s self-portrait, exhibited so as to face off against them across time, is also similarly made, the size and clarity of the image fixed according to an ironic set of rules. Through his creative process, Yamamoto is attempting to contextualize the inseparability of economics and artworks, including those in the museum’s collection, within the history of the art museum.

Artworks are shown to the general public at museums, but are also bought and sold on the art market as objects for ownership and speculation, their prices decided by the logic of supply and demand regardless of the artist’s actual intentions. The value of the money exchanged during those transactions is hypothetically backed up by a nation-state or central bank’s credit. The “hypo-exchange” of the exhibition title hints at the uncertainty inherent to the value of artworks and even money itself, and stems from Yamamoto’s interest in the ambivalence that surrounds art whereby it is both pure and materialistic.

Exploring the detachment the artist feels from the institutions, systems, markets, and other infrastructures that underpin works of art, the exhibition presents manifold perspectives with irony and humor.

The Triangle
The Triangle is a space newly created for the reopening of the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art. It aims to nurture emerging artists, especially those associated with Kyoto, and to provide opportunities for museum visitors to experience contemporary art. In order to connect the artist, museum, and viewer in a triangle and deepen those connections, the space hosts an eponymous series of special exhibitions and presents new artistic expressions from Kyoto.