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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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1 September 2007 |
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| Yoo Seung-Ho: echowords |
| 25 April - 26 May 2007 |
Mizuma Art Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| At first glance Yoo's pen and ink drawings appear to be meticulous imitations of classical Chinese landscapes, but close-up one sees that they consist entirely of tiny Hangul letters. Moreover, the characters spell out cartoon sound effects or words used by children, offering a witty contrast to the elegant but derivative style of the pictures. |
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| Jin Kurashige: His Shadow Enwraps Me |
| 25 April - 26 May 2007 |
Mizuma Action
(Tokyo) |
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| Currently making his home in France, Kurashige derives inspiration for his multimedia artworks from things seen and felt in everyday life. By making art of chance encounters with the ordinary, he encourages viewers to rethink and reappreciate the familiar through the prism of their own experiences and sensibilities. |
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| Le Corbusier: Art and Architecture - A Life of Creativity |
| 26 May - 24 September 2007 |
Mori Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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This show falls on the 120th anniversary of the birth of Le Corbusier (1887-1965), hailed as the father of modern architecture. While renewed attention focuses on the recent completion of his last projects and calls to add his buildings to the UNESCO World Heritage List, Le Corbusier's work extends beyond architecture to painting and sculpture and reflects the philosophy of a deep, original and controversial thinker whose influence is still felt today.
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| Art Award Tokyo |
| 27 April - 27 May 2007 |
Gyoko Chika Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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Art Award Tokyo (AAT) is an attempt to develop a new format for exhibiting art in an urban setting. Using a gallery space in the underground walkway beneath Gyoko-dori in the Marunouchi district near Tokyo Station, the show brings together works nominated from graduate exhibitions at Japan's top art schools. The award selection process by the judges (critics, curators and educators) is open to the public.
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| Yasushi Ebihara: Ghost Culkin |
| 17 May - 22 June 2007 |
Wada Fine Arts
(Tokyo) |
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Ebihara's photographs feature ambiguous people, neither child nor adult, with strange expressions in their pupil-less eyes, arranged in various settings. This series utilizes images of Macaulay Culkin, the former child star best known for the movie "Home Alone," as well as other children in film.
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| Ai Shinohara |
| 28 May - 2 June 2007 |
Gallery Q
(Tokyo) |
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| Shinohara's bold, even shocking motifs come alive through her devotion to detail. Her large compositions are full of visual information: strands of a woman's hair, a lace dress, the colors of flowers, the wood grain in a table. Yet this intense realism ultimately serves to convey an oddly grotesque take on reality. |
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| Masakazu Takahashi |
| 28 May - 2 June 2007 |
nabis gallery
(Tokyo) |
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Takahashi begins with shapes floating in space which he converts to points and connects with lines. Through this approach, says the artist, he tries to remove arbitrary meanings from the images while bringing subconscious scenes to the surface. But he is less concerned with form and composition, he asserts, than with trying to reproduce the delicate yet strong shapes of plant life.
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| Takahito Kimura: Komorebi (Sunlight through Trees) Project |
| 28 May - 3 June 2007 |
Futaba Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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Kimura creates art using natural phenomena as his raw materials. Revolving around the theme of "playing with the Earth," his concepts are simple, yet humorous and poignant. By highlighting the laws and vast powers of nature through small-scale activities and installations, he encourages viewers to see objects and human behavior in a new, sometimes funny, sometimes discomfiting light.
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| Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture |
| 6 June - 13 August 2007 |
The National Art Center, Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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| The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) curated this traveling exhibition, which introduces current trends in fashion and architecture and their mutual influence. Both fields share the same fundamental role of sheltering the human body, yet their similarities have been ignored due to differences in application, scale and materials. This show highlights the common ground they share in techniques, philosophy, composition and so on. |
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| Dennis Hollingsworth: Colossus |
| 2 - 23 June 2007 |
Tomio Koyama Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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Born in Madrid and dividing his activities as a painter between Spain and Los Angeles, Hollingsworth creates a language of expression through the medium of paint itself. Utilizing not only the shapes and colors but also the shadows of paint on canvas, his works bring to the fore the power and richness of the medium.
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