An exhibition at Tokyo’s Hara Museum of Contemporary Art will document the works of several Japanese artists who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, an era of economic stagnation in Japan, offering a glimpse inside the creative minds of a recession-ready generation.

The exhibition, curated by art critic Midori Matsui, will feature some 30 drawings, paintings and video works by 14 “Micropop” artists. Matsui coined the word “Micropop” to describe the mindset of a new generation of Japanese artists who, the museum says, “rearrange fragments of information and knowledge to give new meaning to the outmoded and banal.”

According to the museum, the exhibition, Winter Garden, “reflects a harsh environment of economic recession and political instability in which artists use cheap materials and simple methods to break down existing structures and uncover the beauty that lies dormant within everyday things. [It explores] a world characterized by increasing uniformity spurred by globalization and individuals faced with the need to find meaning in their own lives.”

Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art is at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art May 23-June 20, 2009. See www.haramuseum.or.jp for details.

design, japan, recession