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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering short reviews of 20 exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout Japan over the past two or three months, with an emphasis on contemporary art by young artists. |
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| Taro Okamoto and His Contemporaries in the Post-War Era |
| 24 March - 27 May 2007 |
Setagaya Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| One of Japan's leading avant-garde painters, Okamoto (1911-1996) enjoyed some of his most prolific years after building a studio in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward in 1947. Focusing on this "Setagaya period," the show introduces not only Okamoto's works but those of other avant-garde artists and writers of the era, providing a sense of the postwar environment in which Okamoto worked. |
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| Mitsugu Saito: Waltz |
| 2-27 May 2007 |
iTohen
(Osaka) |
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| Saito creates collages and constructions out of objects he picks up along the seashore near his home in Wakayama. The works in this exhibition incorporate speakers and music created by the artist. |
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| Yoshihiko Kitano |
| 12 May - 2 June 2007 |
Gallery Yamaguchi Kunst-Bau
(Osaka) |
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| Kitano takes a unique approach to the materials that form a painting, particularly its support; his works have consistently exuded a powerful physicality. For his new works, the support is no longer a flat canvas, but a cubelike projection from the wall. The repetition of these forms imparts an air of homogeneity and quietude to the gallery space. |
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| Heihachiro Fukuda |
| 24 April - 3 June 2007 |
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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This retrospective of Nihonga painter Fukuda (1892-1974) demonstrates the unique position in the modern Nihonga world of his bold colors and clear-cut compositions. Fukuda said that he devoted his life to pursuing the movement of water. Realism and decoration come together in works like "New Snow," "Rain," and "Ripples," in which wavelets on a lake fill the canvas.
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| Jakuchu |
| 13 May - 3 June 2007 |
Shokoku-ji Jotenkaku Museum
(Kyoto) |
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| Known for the exotic, chimerical quality of his works, Edo-era painter Ito Jakuchu (1715-1800) donated a set of large painted scrolls, including "Doshoku Saie (Colorful Realm of Living Beings)" and "Shaka Sanzonzo (Sakyamuni Triptych)" to the Shokoku-ji temple in Kyoto, where he lived and worked. With this exhibit the works are reunited at Shokoku-ji for the first time in 120 years. |
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| Masahito Katayama: Membrane - Lights of One Thousand |
| 12 May - 9 June 2007 |
Nomart Contemporary Art
(Osaka) |
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| Occupying the entire gallery space, this installation combines some twenty works from Katayama's various "Membrane" series, which employ motifs from nature like sunflowers and honeycombs. The dominant piece is the thousand-part "Membrane 2004" inspired by the thousand Kannon statues of the Sanjusangen-do temple in Kyoto. |
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| Mami Kosemura: Kiki Shakkei (Miniature Garden) |
| 12 May - 16 June 2007 |
Yuka Sasahara Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| With "ideal landscapes" as her theme, Kosemura creates videos from a series of edited and manipulated still photos in which natural scenery gradually undergoes subtle changes. Also displayed are some of the still photos used to compile the videos. |
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| Sachiko Kazama Solo Show |
| 11 May - 9 June 2007 |
Mujin-to Production
(Tokyo) |
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| Kazama uses her skills as a woodcut artist to comment on the state of Japan today in series like "Reversed Landscape" and "Restructuring the Japanese Archipelago." For the former she traced photos of model homes and condos from advertising flyers, while the latter expresses the destruction of Japan's landscape in the name of development through depictions of imaginary 70s-style animation supervillains. |
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| Vital Signs: Reality of Nine Contemporary Artists |
| 28 April - 16 July 2007 |
Yokosuka Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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The opening show at this new museum brings together nine artists whose art derives from and gives vivid expression to the reality of living. All work in very different styles and media; of particular note are the organism-like pencil drawings of Naoko Majima.
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| Noriaki Maeda: Recent Work |
| 6 April - 12 May 2007 |
Yokohama Portside Gallery
(Kanagawa) |
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| Sculptor Maeda has gone through several phases in the past, from iron statuary that resembled Romanesque sculpture to large-scale works that evoke the remnants of ancient structures or parts of the Trojan Horse. Recently he has been producing playful, witty sculptures using a variety of materials -- acrylic, glass, and metal mesh. |
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