Last November, the National Art Center, Tokyo, announced the world’s first large-scale retrospective dedicated to the works of Japanese Pop Art pioneer Keiichi Tanaami. “Adventures in Memory” opened on Aug. 7, a loud and sweeping show with 11 “chapters” dedicated to the postwar designer and artist’s 60-year career. Though he worked passionately on the show, involved in everything from the planning to the PR, Tanaami never saw the exhibit in person. Two days after the opening, he died from a subarachnoid hemorrhage that had occurred in late July. He was 88.
The exhibit was likely not intended to be posthumous, but the ambiguity is unsettling. Tanaami’s gallerist, Shinji Nanzuka, didn’t announce his death until Aug. 20, meaning that for 13 days his studio’s Instagram account continued to post about the artist’s collaborations with the likes of Barbie, as if everything were business as usual. Now with hindsight, these bardo social media posts seem to hint at the fact that Tanaami had always been preoccupied with death — as if the reality of his passing had no effect on the fantasies of his imagination.
The prologue to the exhibition features two works completed in 2024, a sculpture and digital print both titled “A Hundred Bridges,” which now read as bridges to the last testament of the departed artist.