Statement:

At a time when western architecture was flowing into Japan, Ito Chuta, the architect who designed Dendoin, used the re-examination of eastern architectural style to “westernize eastern architecture”. He was not caught up in the trappings of fashion and capitalism, but rather seemed to have a respect and gaze for the culture and tradition, an accumulation of time that humanity had built. This exhibition, in a building that embodies this practice, will introduce works of art that involve varying ways we are involved in time, and culture, memory, and traces that are shaped within it.The exhibition begins with the limited time given individual lives, and the infinite time spun through threads of life and death.///

From there, it goes on to individual time as memory, time held by objects as vestiges, cultural time as history. It develops into works that cross over culture and time, works that have a nostalgia for time of existence outside of humans. And finally, it separates from the relativistic concept of time that we recognize, and by experiencing absolute time in a place where there is no clock, no light, and no reminders of time, asks us again to think about what time is to us.

The “Flowers of Time” exhibition, a Satellite Program curated by ACK Program Director Yukako Yamashita, will take place at Hongwanji Dendoin. The exhibition explores the concept of “time,” which we all have in equal measure, through an eclectic range of works by world-renowned and emerging artists.The exhibition introduces a wide range of works related to time, starting with works that evoke a universal concept of time, through to works exploring “memory” as something experienced individually, to “history” representing cultural phenomenon, as well as “traces” of time held by objects. By considering time not only in the usual manner as something relative, but also as something infinite that is beyond comprehensive, yet something finite that is within each of us, the exhibition asks how we can respect one another and coexist in the time – limited and impartial – we are living today.The venue, Hongwanji Dendoin, is an important cultural property built in 1912 to the design of Tokyo Imperial University professor, Chuta Ito. Not normally open to the public, it is a unique building that incorporates various architectural styles, including brick walls based on British architecture and an Islam-inspired dome.