'Chiba City Museum of Art holds an exhibition: "The Essentials". Works of four contemporary artists in Japan: Takuro Osaka, Yoshihiro Suda, Satoshi Otsuka, and Yoshiaki Watanabe, will be introduced. Works of these artists are composed of rather familiar elements, such as light, mirrors, wood sculpture, and burning candles. No projected images or sound is used, and there are no specifically exciting objects. Messages or characters that befit modern society are not used either, and there is nothing that is novel or difficult to understand as the work of a museum or artists. Ordinary elements that we may glimpse in our daily life are taken up and presented by the artists. However, with the help of ordinary elements, such as natural phenomena and rhythms, as well as the existence of objects, these artists are wholeheartedly pursuing the most primordial function performed by ancient art; namely, the simple and difficult purpose to "awaken our senses and deeply impress us". Today's fashion in Japanese art is subjective, articulate pictorial expression, but the succession of artists since ancient times who have worked to purify the universal, essential artistic experience, underlies such fashion of the day.' - April 2002 organizer. This catalogue includes a bibliography and artist's biographies.