YOKO ONO : LUMIÈRE

YOKO ONO: LUMIÈRE, A retrospective at the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon
3,000 m2 of artworks from 1952 to 2016 on 3 fl oors of the Museum
– Works to see, hear, and interact with.

MAC Lyon is very pleased to announce the fi rst comprehensive retrospective of the internationally known artist, Yoko Ono, to take place in France. Ono is a rare individual, who emerged as an artist, fully formed. From the beginning, working with concepts and ideas, new ways of listening, new ways of making sound. Her education was philosophy, and the extraordinarily diffi cult times of war and displacement. She was born in 1933, in Tokyo, and visited the United States when she was 3 or 4, but was forced to return with her family to Japan when the war broke out. During the bombing of Tokyo, she and her brother were forced to move to the countryside, away from the destruction of the city, and it was there that she discovered sky and imagination, creating menus for food in the sky for her brother, and seeing the sky as a peaceful oasis from the hardship that surrounded her. By 1952, she had written a work titled Th e Soundless Music, and another, which she illustrated, titled An Invisible Flower. Both of these works use concepts as their foundation. In 1953, Yoko Ono moved to New York to continue her studies, and there wrote A Grapefr uit in the World of Park, which became the basis for some of her earliest performance works. During the winter of 1960-61, Ono developed the idea of her conceptual instruction pieces, realizing some in her Chambers Street loft, and others at George Maciunas’ AG Gallery. It was this infl uence of instructions and participation that became some of the fundamental bases of Maciunas’ formation of Fluxus. Yoko Ono then developed the idea that a visual representation of a concept was not necessary, and exhibited her Instr ucti ons for Painti ngs, which consisted only of words written on paper, and hung on the gallery wall. Th e fi nal step in this process occurred in 1964 with the publication of Grapefr uit. Yoko Ono has created works in many diff erent forms – sound works, fi lm works, participation works, instructions, architecture, installations, and environments. All of these will be refl ected and included in the macLYON exhibition with works spanning the period from 1952 to 2016.