Current Yoko Ono solo shows
Yoko Ono related group shows
Yoko Ono's exhibitions from 1961 to present

hiraku/open
Gallery 360, Tokyo, Japan
November 6th - 25th 2006

Press release: "This show was exhibited under the title heal for the first time in Berlin this past February. The title was changed to wake for the exhibition shown later in Antwerp, Belgium. Now it is entitled open in Tokyo. Two maps of the city where the exhibition is held are displayed on the wall, one of which is an old map of the city in early 1900, the other is the current map of the city. Rubber stamps engraved with the show title of each city hang on the wall. The viewers are supposed to take the stamp and mark the map at the place, where they want to 'heal', 'wake' or 'open'.

Each city has its own long history and past, and it also leaves the traces that the city has been broken by wars, natural disasters such as earthquakes, but the memory of which has faded over time. When scientists discovered DNA in the 20th century, it revealed the truth of life as 'Information System' that was created so accurately beyond belief. The streets and corners of a city designed in a complicated way tend to be described as pulse, blood vessels, and nerves running under human skin. A city is regarded as an emptied human body. Yoko Ono provides a word to a city that she assumes it needs. Then, the viewers think of the meaning of the word and heal the pain and the past that the city embraces through the action of stamping. Through these healing actions, they will feel themselves healed.

The more positive word open has become the title of Tokyo exhibition. There has been booming enthusiasm about Japan recently. How will the metropolitan city, Tokyo, now open itself to the world as the center of Japan? That will be the biggest concern. Yoko Ono has been proposing that science and art would change the world, and she acts accordingly. Taking another hard look at a city is looking back on yourself. She questions what we can do to achieve the true globalism after healing the pain caused in the past."

grapefruit
Berkeley Art Museum, California
October 18th 2006 - March 28th 2007

From the museum press release: "The Berkeley Art Museum is delighted to present an exhibition of Yoko Ono's instruction paintings selected from that groundbreaking publication. Gracefully expressive, enchanting, and original, the paintings are presented as wall texts that fill the gallery in the same way that paintings on canvas do. However, the conceptual nature of the art offers the beholder a means of taking the paintings home in the form of a do-it-yourself idea."

Yoko Ono related films will be a part of this exhibition during January 16th - February 13th:

No. 4 (Bottoms)
"In the feature-length version of a short Yoko Ono made as a member of the Fluxus group, she filmed some 365 sets of naked buttocks and recorded the wry comments of the models, who were recruited from among the London avant-garde community. With Dore Bowen and Cathy Lee Crane's Becoming Academic Part II: Falling for Yoko."

Rape
"A London cameraman stalks a woman who eventually becomes frantic: an intriguing work of feminism and film critique, as well as a commentary on celebrity for the likes of Yoko Ono. With Ono shorts Freedom and Fly."

Bed-In
"John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous 1969 bed-in was a singular (actually, a double) antiwar protest. With Kota Ezawa's Lennon, Sontag, Beuys and Yong Soon Min and Allan deSouza's Will **** for Peace."

Grapefruit
"Cecelia Dougherty's video based obliquely on Ono's book Grapefruit reconstructs moments from the charmed history of John and Yoko. In an all-female cast, Susie Bright plays John. With Gregory Sale's Looking for Yoko Ono and Ono/Lennon short Apotheosis."

wake yoko ono
M3 - Galerie Gianluca Ranzi, Antwerpen, Belgium
June 15th - July 15th 2006

Photos of Yoko Ono during the opening and of the exhibition

yoko ono's installations at city of london festival
St Paul's Cathedral: June 26th - July 13th 2006

Press release: "Morning Beams is a dramatic installation using rope to create the illusion of beams of light from a natural light source. The beams reach the floor where they shine onto River Bed, a 'river of life' made from pebbles. These works, along with Wish Tree, belong to a recent series of works created by Yoko Ono which use elements from the natural worlds to enable the viewer to interact with her artwork. Sited in the North Transept of St Paul's, adjacent to Holman Hunt's Light of the World, they create an environment of meditative reflection."

mending peace
CENTRE A, Vancouver, Canada: June 3rd - July 1st 2006

Press release: "The exhibition brings together three works by Yoko Ono that speak to the theme of imagining peace. Transmitting real-time images of the sky to a television set inside the gallery, Sky TV (1966) is one of the earliest video installations ever made and is Yoko Ono’s only work in video art. In Mend Peace, the audience participates by mending broken china. For Wish Tree, visitors are invited to write down their desires on pieces of paper and tie them to trees in the gallery. At the end of the exhibition, all the wishes will be saved and sent to New York to be included in the Tower of Peace that Yoko Ono will make in Iceland. “Mending Peace” is curated by Alice Ming Wai Jim and accompanied by an illustrated exhibition booklet with an essay by Midori Yoshimoto."

heal yoko ono
Galerie Davide Di Maggio, Berlin, Germany:
February 23rd - April 20th 2006

WE'RE ALL WATER and other pieces by Yoko Ono. WE'RE ALL WATER is inspired by a concept that Yoko Ono published in 1967, for her exhibition at the Lisson Gallery in London:

"you are water / I'm water / we're all water in different containers / that's why it's so easy to meet / someday we'll evaporate together / but even after the water's gone / we'll probably point out to the containers / and say - that's me there, that one - / we're container minders"

sky tv for hokkaido
Shimizu, Hokkaido, Japan: October 8th - 30th 2005

Sky TV for Hokkaido 2005 (15 TV monitors that air the Hokkaido sky), Wish tree, Blue Room event, Cloud Piece (a hole dug in the garden with a mirror), films by Yoko Ono.

Sky TV is displayed in a deserted house in Hokkaido. Also other pieces by Yoko Ono will be located at the deserted house.

"Is there an art that can be greater than the beauty of the sky?

Wish Tree for Hokkaido: the tags on which the wishes were written are going to be sent to Yoko Ono once a year and accommodated by the peaceful prayer obelisk in Iceland.

This exhibition will be opened to the public this year June 3rd-October 29th 2006 (Sunday), only on Saturdays and Sundays. Those who want to see the exhibition are asked to gather in front of Cafe Kisara within Tokachi Millennium Forest at 1:30PM. A guide will take you to the exhibition site.

we're all water
Gallery 360°, Tokyo, Japan: October 6th - 29th 2005

yoko ono
Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau, Germany: August 6th - October 23rd 2005

13 film pieces by Yoko Ono, for instance Bottoms (1966), Rape (1969) and Fly (1970). Other pieces for instance Painting to hammer a nail and Ceiling Painting.

Yoko Ono will also do a performance in the Passau Opera House on October 22nd 2005 (please notice the date change).

horizontal memories
Migros Museum, Zürich, Switzerland: June 4th - August 14th 2005

"The following works will be shown in the exhibition: Instructions For Paintings (1961/1962), Sky Machine (1966), Half-A-Room (1967), Amaze (1971/2003), Vertical Memories (1997), Horizontal Memories (1997/2005), Sky Tv (1966/2005), Wish Tree (1996/2005), Morning Beams (1996/2005), Riverbed / Cleaning Piece (1996/2005), Crickets (1998) Water Event (1971/2005). They will be shown together with the films: film No. 1 (Match) (1966), film No. 4 (Bottoms) (1966-1967), film No. 5 (Smile) (1968), Rape (1969), Fly (1970), Freedom (1970), Apotheosis (1970) and Erection (1971), and the musical works Cough Piece, Fly and A Blueprint for The Sunrise.

The Japanese artist Yoko Ono (b. 1933) will be presented to a wider public in Switzerland for the first time in the comprehensive solo exhibition at the migros museum für gegenwartskunst. Yoko Ono organised her first happenings and performances as early as the 1950s, and later on was one of the driving forces behind the Fluxus movement. The exhibition combines her most important works from the 1960s and 1970s with more recent ones, providing an overview of her creative output. It includes installations, sculptures, films and photographs as well as her famous Instructions. Emphasis is also placed on the artist’s musical work. "

There will also be a special event by Yoko Ono in Schauspielhaus Zürich on June 2nd 2005.

Photos of Yoko Ono at the opening of this exhibition

herstory
Galerie Ruethmueller, Basel, Switzerland: June 4th - July 30th 2005

dream universe
Portikus im Leinwandhaus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany: June 1st - 26th 2005

Press release: "The exhibition Dream Universe takes Yoko Ono's "Instruction Works" as a starting point. In this piece, which has been developing continually since the early 1960s, the participation of the viewer is necessary in order to realise the individual works, where questions about the nature of ephemera and the demystification of the art object rise to the foreground. In Yoko Ono's first exhibition of "Instruction Paintings and Drawings", which took place in 1961 in George Maciunas A G Gallery in New York City, she reduced her work to a simple concept where the gallery visitors were invited to take part in the creative process and participate in the execution of the artwork. For Dream Universe, We have invited a group of students from the Städelschule to realise the "Instructions" that Yoko Ono has proposed as well as some that they have selected themselves.

Some examples of realised instructions:

film no. 3 toilet thoughts
Prepare 365 copies of a poster and paste them in bar toilets around the city. Leave them for a week and take pictures of all 365 copies. Leave them again for a month and take pictures of them. Go on until you are satisfied or until the posters disappear. Make a film by stringing all the pictures together. 1968

omnibus film
1) Give a print of the same film to many directors.
2) Ask each one to re-edit the print.
3) Show all the versions together omnibus style. 1964 june

sun piece
Watch the sun until it becomes square. 1962 winter

The Presentation of the individual works will assume different forms and will change during the duration of the exhibition as the process entails. Works will be executed in the exhibition context, in public spaces and also in a publication that will be available at the end of the exhibition.

participating students
Will Benedict, Kerstin Cmelka, Andreas Diefenbach, Özlem Günyol, Tamara Henderson, Juliana Herrero, Hanna Hildebrand, Andrei Koschmieder, Mustafa Kunt, Maria M. Loboda, Sarah Ortmeyer, Anna Ostoya, Simone Slee, Taner Tümkaya, Hendrik Zimmer."

Photos of Yoko Ono during the Dream Universe opening