Advertising posters and campaigns for the Japanese company MUJI
On display in the spacious hall are the large-sized posters created by Kenya Hara since 2001 for the Japanese company MUJI. His long-standing involvement and completion of advertising projects for what is now a global brand is linked to a specific vision for the company’s development and the realisation of these goals. From the start, the company’s core concept was to create a group of extremely simple, low-cost items by fundamentally simplifying the production process. MUJI’s constantly evolving concept is based on identifying the simplest and most universal needs of everyday life. Recognising these as values will be important for the world in the time to come. As a MUJI designer, Kenya Hara strives to combine the culture of life with economics: “From a global perspective, I want to help create products that most people will accept, saying ‘this will do’.” His advertising concept offered to MUJI is based on the notion of emptiness, which means advertising without an explicit message. The designs created for MUJI as symbolic “empty vessels” merge simplicity with the beauty of minimalism; stripped of all excess, they command attention.
Editorial work: books, catalogues
Kenya Hara has for many years designed books and various commemorative publications. His projects demonstrate a considerable commitment to tradition, particularly evident in his approach to paper itself. Each project is extremely meticulous and seeks ways to adapt the design to the theme of the publication. On display are, e.g. covers for One Book, a magazine dedicated to books, published on a regular basis by Asahi Shimbun, catalogues of Hara’s own exhibitions: FILING – Chaotic management (2005), Senseware (2012), Subtle. The 47th Takeo Paper Show (2014), a promotional book Don’t Talk about Colors for the Issey Miyake fashion house (1997), and a publication dedicated to one of the major Japanese ukiyo-e artists, UTAMARO: The Beauty (2016).
Posters since 1990
The exhibition gathers e.g. the major posters which have been created since the onset of Kenya Hara’s artistic career. The most crucial of them are the series made between 1990 and 1994, “Takeo Paper World”; they were designed for the annual shows of the Japanese paper manufacturer Takeo Co. Ltd. Here the author experimented with form and texture to produce extremely arcane abstract art.
Another series of abstract works are the posters “Life is there. Modern poster exhibition of artist from 2 generations” for the exhibition held by the Japan Design Committee, gathering the most eminent Japanese designers, as well as the series “Museum product, practical design with innocent allure”.on exhibition
The posters which directly reference Japanese culture include, among others, a series created for the “Expo Japan 2005. The 2005 World Exposition, Japan. Beyond Development: Rediscovering Nature’s Wisdom”, a poster designed for the “21st Century Rimpa Poster” show in the Ginza Graphic Gallery Tokyo in 2015 and the poster Noh for the project jointly implemented by the UCLA and Waseda University in 2017, related to the topics addressing the most significant theatre traditions of Japanese culture.
