In Painting a River of Renga (2023), Yokoo inserts himself as the artist painting the same scenery in brighter light, with the same bridge, but now with the number of members reduced, and two of them faceless. There is a sensation of repetition paused slightly with complex transformations as time transcends.

Tadanori Yokoo, Painting a River of Renga, 2023, Collection of the Artist

Yokoo further extrapolates the breeze of time in Mexicans and Farmers (2024) and River of Renga in Tahiti (2024) where his classmates have metamorphosed into entirely altered beings, resurrecting memories from his past. Yet, the element of water constantly remains. For the artist, water exists as shapeless, but can freely assume other infinite forms. Humans are born from the mother’s womb of water, and finally return to the “sea of reincarnation repeating the cycle of life and death.”

Tadanori Yokoo, River of Renga in Tahiti, 2024, Collection of the Artist

Intriguing are the four works , Nostalgia (2024), The End of Life Is Moral (2024), This Is Not a Comma, but a Period (Morning) (2024) and Bosch’s Jar (2024). All the pieces consist of an urn or jar, that seems to symbolize an allegory of the receptacle of the dead’s ashes reincarnated to life. “The End of Life Is Moral” illustrates a mysterious green man poking out of a black urn and extends a long pole downward, while on the right,  a seemingly naked woman juts out of a red urn with crossed arms. In “Nostalgia”, a figure sits facing backwards, perhaps inside the urn, while on the right, the character appears either inside the urn or is the urn himself. Yokoo himself regarded his paintings as self-reflective. He remarked, “So maybe the River of Renga is not a series of pictures I painted; rather, it’s me, portrayed in pictures.” 

Tadanori Yokoo, Bosch’s Jar, 2024, Collection of the Artist

What makes Yokoo’s masterpieces (including the River of Renga series) most alluring is his cunning ability to compose collages in stunning motifs, colors, forms, and techniques entangled around multiplex images drawn from memories and history traced all over the world. The result compels the viewer to delve deeply into the pictures and experience almost the same nostalgia caught in the artist’s mind. 

Together with sketchbooks of pasted cutout photographs from magazines and newspapers, and a video clip of the artist in his atelier, the showcase entices the audience to regard commemorative keepsakes as windows to not only past recollections, but also one’s ever-changing self flowing over time. 

Tadanori Yokoo: River of Renga
Date: April 26th – June 22nd, 2025
Opening Hours: 10:00 – 18:00
Closed on Mondays
Place: Setagaya Art Museum
Address: 1-2 Kinuta-koen, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo
Tel: +81 (0)3 3415 6011
https://www.setagayaartmuseum.or.jp