The Light of Time in Tokyo

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo houses around 6.100 works, primarily from the postwar period, presented in rotating displays that offer a different perspective on the collection each time. From 19 September 2026 to 6 January 2027, MOT Collection: Past Light, Present Sight takes two closely connected elements as its central themes: light and time. The exhibition also features numerous recent acquisitions. Light is explored through its different forms and durations: the light of stars reaching Earth after travelling for thousands of years, shifting sunlight, the glow of the moon, electric illumination and the fleeting flicker of fireflies. These images allow the exhibition to examine the relationship between perception and memory: what we see in the present can preserve traces of a past moment, while time appears as a succession of layers that continue to overlap. The theme extends across different works and generations of Japanese and international art. Featured artists include Yayoi Kusama, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ushio Shinohara, Tadanori Yokoo, Yoko Matsumoto, Mami Kosemura, Kimio Tsuchiya and Shigeo Toya, alongside American artists Dan Flavin and Agnes Martin. Several works illustrate the variety of approaches within the exhibition. Mami Kosemura’s Flowering Plants of the Four Seasons, created between 2004 and 2006, addresses the passage of time through the natural world, while Kimio Tsuchiya’s Absence, from 1992, uses light and space within a three-dimensional structure. Also on display are Tadanori Yokoo’s Destiny from 1997 and Shigeo Toya’s large-scale sculpture Death of the Kiln of the Elephant of the Woods, created in 1989. Past Light, Present Sight therefore does not follow a chronological sequence. Instead, works are brought together according to the ways in which they record, preserve or make the passage of time perceptible. The present becomes the point at which images, materials and memories from different moments temporarily come together.