DOXYGEN: Chvála stínů s Moemi Yamamoto

A fresh cultural emulsion: part exhibition, part workshop, part experiment. And above all, fresh oxygen.

DOXYGEN consists of lectures, workshops, discussions, creative workshops, and everything in between. Contemporary art, contemporary phenomena, contemporary personalities, and the contemporary moment. Evening gatherings at DOX, during which visitors can ponder questions and answers. Their own and those of others.

The lecture by a Japanese painter who studied fine arts in Japan and recently graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague is inspired by the exhibition GA-I-SU-RA and the theme of the intermingling of Eastern and Western cultures.

"Our ancestors, who were forced to live in dark rooms, gradually discovered the beauty of shadows and eventually learned to use them for aesthetic purposes." This quote from Tanizaki aptly sums up pre-modern Japanese aesthetics. It is the tendency to seek beauty in darkness—for example, in the color of a bowl that appears as a layer of darkness, in the appearance of a woman whose face and hands stand out from the surrounding darkness, or in the subtle shadows in a tokonoma alcove. "If an independent scientific civilization different from the West had developed in the East, the Japanese might not have been so eager to imitate the West in modern times, but instead would have set out toward more original new horizons," says Tanizaki. His book describes not only the aesthetics of Japanese beauty, but also the loss of Japanese identity since the modern era and reflections on how to address it. Japanese painter Moemi Yamamoto, who works in Prague, discusses Japanese aesthetics of darkness, a new "perspective" gained in the Czech Republic, and commonalities between Czech and Japanese painting through her work.

The lecture will be preceded by a guided tour of the exhibition GA-I-SU-RA, which presents the life's work of Czech Japanologist, translator, journalist, calligrapher, photographer, and educator Petr Geisler (1949–2009).

For young people aged 16 to 30. The program lasts approximately 2.5 hours and includes a guided tour, lecture, and break.