Old mops, old tires, discarded electric fans, bits of plastic street detritus, all quivering with life like tropical underwater plants and painted with a lush, psychedelic palette . . . At first glance these appear to be gritty urban snapshots channeled through Salvador Dali. But Daisuke Fukunaga is no surrealist. His subjects are real and inanimate, but he skillfully and enthusiastically imbues -- or maybe a better word is "infects" -- them with life. The results are vivid, colorful, and vaguely unsettling, like a still life of fruit that is beginning to rot.

Titling this show Documenting Senses - From Cats' Eyes, not Dogs', Fukunaga describes his attraction to such objects as follows: "Sometimes I see mops on street corners, abandoned tires on roads, wheels displayed in show windows, and motorbike seats highlighted under street lights as indescribable sculptures . . . I capture my astonishment . . . and document the emotions I find there . . . with the eyes of a stray cat wandering aimlessly and staring into something."

Art critic Noi Sawaragi, quoted on the gallery's website, associates the "things as they are" quality of Fukunaga's work with the Mono-ha (literally "school of things") movement of the 1970s: "The mop is simply there . . . it reveals the ground of being that underlies the mop as an existing entity." Uh, okay. Actually, the critic may have a point. Fukunaga's work is most successful when he reins in his impulse to embellish, and his objects are "simply there." One of the loveliest of his still lifes is an assemblage of mops and brooms sticking out of a trashcan amid some odds and ends of debris. Painted in their natural shades of dirty gray against a two-tone blue background (the title is a simple and appropriate Sky), the tools look almost like dried flowers, or dandelion tufts. The effect is subdued yet stunning: beauty found not merely in the mundane, but in the discarded and disregarded.

Until this past spring, the main Koyama gallery occupied the entire top floor of the Maruhachi Warehouse in Kiyosumi, on the east side of the Sumida River. The industrial ambience of the neighborhood, the building, and the space itself seemed just right for showcasing the Koyama's vaunted roster of big-time contemporary artists, both domestic and foreign. There was also an element of esprit de corps at the Maruhachi site, which the Koyama shared with several other galleries. All had converged there after a period of nomadic wandering along the Sumida from one converted warehouse to another, as each was demolished in turn to make way for condominiums.

Sharing a renovated building with Taka Ishii Gallery, another former Maruhachi tenant, the Koyama now makes do with a far more intimate space, which it opened in June with a show of work by the late American outsider artist James Castle. But the Sendagaya venue is complemented by a second, also relatively new site in bustling Shibuya, just a couple of subway stops away -- 8/ Art Gallery, which opened in 2012 on the eighth floor of the Hikarie highrise shopping complex. In a video interview, Koyama says, "This gallery in Sendagaya is focused on what you might call the 'international art scene,' while for my Shibuya gallery, I want to focus on an approach that takes into consideration the domestic Japanese market." He adds, "I want to support both established and emerging artists, as well as those who work in other genres, such as design and craft. But at Sendagaya I'd like to focus on work that is closer to what you might call 'art.'"

In fact, the more sedate, less industrial vibe of the Sendagaya space is just right for introducing artists like Fukunaga who work in two-dimensional, non-monumental formats. Here, paintings do not get dwarfed by cavernous, high-ceilinged rooms like those at the Maruhachi, nor do they have to compete with the distracting buzz from adjacent shops as at Hikarie. If the Koyama Gallery is serious about continuing to exhibit promising but lesser-known artists in addition to its big-name clients, Sendagaya is the perfect place.