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Above: Josh Kline,Capture and Sequestration: Cigarettes
2023. High-definition video (color, sound), 13 min. 31 sec.
Courtesy: Lisson Gallery; 47 Canal.
MAM Screen 023: Josh Kline
Above: Josh Kline,Capture and Sequestration: CigarettesExhibition Period: 2026.4.29 [Wed] - 9.23 [Wed]
| Organizer | Mori Art Museum |
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| Curated by | Victor Wang (Adjunct Curator, Mori Art Museum) |
The 23rd edition of the MAM Screen presents the Japan premiere of two video works by artist Josh Kline - Capture and Sequestration: Gasoline (2023) and Capture and Sequestration: Cigarettes (2023) - from his larger project about the climate crisis.
Together, the works examine everyday acts of combustion, such as burning gasoline and smoking a cigarette, as points of access to the historical systems of extraction, empire, and industrialization that underpin the climate crisis.
The title refers to carbon capture and sequestration, an experimental strategy proposed as a technological solution to the climate crisis: extracting carbon from the atmosphere and burying it underground. Kline asks what it might mean to apply this logic to other toxic atmospheres - social, political, historical - that cannot be so easily contained.
Kline’s full suite of Capture and Sequestration videos centers on foundational commodities such as oil, tobacco, sugar, and cotton, whose production and circulation powered the rise of the United States as a military, economic, and cultural empire.
Through these materials, the lineage of human-made climate change can be traced back through industrialization to the violent foundations of that power: the enslavement of Africans and the theft of Indigenous land. In these two works, oil and tobacco become condensed symbols of that longer history, replayed through small, controlled gestures of burning.
Works Screened
1. Capture and Sequestration: Gasoline, 2023
2. Capture and Sequestration: Cigarettes, 2023
Above: Josh Kline,Capture and Sequestration: Gasoline
2023. High-definition video (color, sound), 14 min. 25 sec.
Courtesy: Lisson Gallery; 47 Canal.
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About the Artist
Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia, USA) lives and works in New York, USA. In 2024 he had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and was included in the 24th Biennale of Sydney and the 8th Yokohama Triennial. In 2023 his work was the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York. Kline’s art has been widely exhibited internationally, in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and MoMA PS1 in New York; The Hirschhorn Museum and The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; KW, Berlin; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; MCAD, Manila; ICA Boston; ICA Philadelphia; and MOCA Cleveland; among many others. His work has been written about in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Artforum, Interview Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Art in America, and Frieze. Kline’s works are included in the collections of major museums including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
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VICTOR WANG
All content property of © Victor Wang 2009 - 2026 All rights reserved - Sydney–Tokyo
All content property of © Victor Wang 2009 - 2026 All rights reserved - Sydney–Tokyo