Press Release 2020/08/31

SHOP@CAFE Christo／Hitomi Uchikura
Café d’Art at Hara Museum ARC
August 21 (Friday) – November 3 (Tuesday/national holiday), 2020
10:00 am – 4:30 pm
SHOP@CAFE is a continuing series of small exhibits that showcase art
and specialty goods that embellish daily life under the catchphrase“Living with Art.” For this 10th installment, we are featuring signed
offset lithographs by the art world giant Christo who passed away at
the age of 84 on May 31, and various small pieces on the theme oflight, beautifully created by Hitomi Uchikura, an artist previously basedin Paris and Berlin. Visitors will find 10 artworks by Christo from theHara Museum Collection in the exhibition The Look of Hope -Selections from the Hara Museum Collection now on display in thecontemporary galleries, and work by Uchikura in the exhibition A Trio ofMasters — Eitoku, Tan'yu and Okyo on view in the Kankai Pavilion.
ChristoChristo was born in Bulgaria in 1935. In 1958, he met Jeanne-Claude, who was born in Paris on the same day as Christo.
Pursuing every project from then on together, she would be an irreplaceable partner in all things public and private. Earlyin his career, he wrapped sundry items like bottles and cans, and began attracting attention for work consisting of stackedoil barrels. After moving to New York in 1964, Christo began making wrapped art with things on a much larger scale likebuildings and nature, as well as large-scale works made with materials other than fabric. He went on to complete suchprojects as Running Fence (California, 1976), Surrounded Islands (Florida, 1983), The Umbrellas, Japan-USA (Californiaand Ibaraki, 1991), Wrapped Reichstag ( Berlin, 1995), The Gates (New York, 2005) and other massive projects thatinvolved local people, governments and the natural environment. Christo and Jeanne-Claude claimed their one and only
goal was “joy and beauty" in the projects that they pursued, all of which existed for only a limited time, from a few days
to a few weeks, before disappearing. In 1983, Christo held Christo: Wrapped Walk Ways and gave several lectures at theHara Museum. In 1990, he held Christo: Surrounded Islands at Hara Museum ARC. Christo passed away on May 31,2020.
Hitomi Uchikura
Born in Kagoshima prefecture in 1956, Hitomi Uchikura studied Japanese painting at Tama Art University, receiving her
MFA there in 1982. In 1985, she was selected as a participant in the Hara Annual V exhibition (at the Hara Museum),
then considered a gateway to success for contemporary artists, and in 2003-2004 was dispatched to France by theJapanese Agency for Cultural Affairs as part of its Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists. She continued her art
activities afterwards while dividing her time between Japan and Europe. Her major solo exhibitions include LUMIÈRE(Space Culture Bertin Poirèe, Paris, 2006), LUMIÈRE (Japanese-German Center Berlin, 2012), Hitomi Uchikura (GalerieDUTKO, Paris, 2013), LUMIÈRE (Semjon Contemporary, Berlin, 2018) and LUMIÈRE (Shun Art Gallery, Shanghai, 2015).
Her major group exhibitions include Quest for Light and Darkness (Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, 2012), Art forConnection (Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, 2013) and Licht und Shatten (Wasser Gallery, Berlin, 2017). Her
work appeared in Kankai Pavilion Opening Exhibition – Beyond Time, Beyond Space at Hara Museum ARC in 2008 and in
The Hara Museum Collection at 35 at the Hara Museum in 2014. She lives in Nasu, Tochigi prefecture.

11, 2 Works by Hitomi Uchikura

233 Lithograph by Christo 4 SHOP@CAFE inside the Cafe d'Art

Press Enquiries: T. 81.279.24.6585 E. press@haramuseum.or.jp

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