The 2022 programme at Le Forum opens with the exhibition “A Quiet Sun” by Kazuna Taguchi, who was born in Tokyo in 1979 and lives and works in Vienna. Here the artist proposes a hybrid corpus of sophisticated prints and found photographs. Her works are created by first superposing different photographs of her own paintings and sculptures and then overpainting these images in oils, before photographing them once more in black and white. The artist likens the multiple strata of her successive plastic interventions to the work of a painter who returns tirelessly to their easel. Alongside these pieces, found photographs that the artist collects are also presented. At times, she restores these images and even integrates them into her own pieces, introducing an element of chance to her work. Between anonymous memories and mythological imaginings, the exhibition “A Quiet Sun” plays out in the natural light of Le Forum, which delicately reveals its fleeting presences.

Like Kazuna Taguchi, the next two artists to exhibit at Le Forum are Japanese in origin but live far from the archipelago: Christian Hidaka was born in 1977 in Noda, Japan, and lives and works in London (UK), while Takeshi Murata was born in 1974 in Chicago (US) and today lives and works in Los Angeles. The title of their joint exhibition, “Visitors”, is a deliberately ambiguous one. Who are these titular visitors? The artists who have come to show their work in Japan, or the public who have come to discover it? Brought together at Le Forum, both artists explore a fictional narrative. Christian Hidaka is known for his paintings inspired by the Renaissance and by Western art in general. Here, he offers a journey through a symmetrical world peopled by Picasso’s harlequins and details from Fra Angelico or the drawings of Joshua Kirby. As a counterpoint to this body of work steeped in art-historical references, Takeshi Murata presents a video dedicated to Larry, a basketball-playing dog. Akin to a sculpture, this animated character contains a self-portrait of the artist that exists only in virtual space. From artistic quotations to prospective visions, visitors to Le Forum are invited to discover two fictional realities equally tinged with strangeness.