Cut + Paste: Experimental Japanese Prints and Photographs

In a multilayered print, a couple walks down a street past squatting onlookers. Two silhouette profiles overlay the left third, in cyan and red to green gradient.
  • Dates

    June 21–November 20, 2025

  • Location

    Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 25

  • Collection Area

    Contemporary Art, Japanese Art

Leave your assumptions about prints and photographs behind. In this exhibition, flat surfaces expand outward. Images aren’t simply printed—they are worked, reworked, and then reworked again. Paper artworks accumulate layers of unusual materials like plastic, foam, glue, and tape. In our era of media endlessly copied, reproduced, and loaded to screens, these photographs and prints beg to be viewed in person.

Cut + Paste showcases seventeen Japanese artists who pushed the limits of printmaking and photography. By combining techniques, these artists created multilayered images that challenge distinctions between mediums, art-making traditions, and notions of fine art and commercial design.

The prints and photographs in this exhibition are drawn entirely from our permanent collection and range across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These experimental works blur reality, memory, and even how we perceive space and time. Just as each artist’s approach is unique and deeply personal, so is every person’s experience of the multiple layers, angles, and textures of these artworks.


Support

 

Generous support for this exhibition and the museum’s Japanese art program is provided by

  • Mitsubishi Corporation

Additional support for this exhibition is provided by the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment for Japanese Art.

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