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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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| Juca Izusawa x Tattaka |
| 14 - 29 July 2007 |
Shirataki Gofukuten
(Tokyo) |
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| Graphic designer/artists Izusawa and Tattaka (Tatsuo Takahashi) formed the Bit Rabbit "visual unit" in 1997; their latest show takes place in the Shirataki kimono shop. The space itself, with its elegant garden, sturdy architecture and graceful kimono fabrics, is worth a visit in its own right. However, the connection between this space and the works the artists chose to display in it is far from obvious. |
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| Chim↑Pom: "Oh My God" |
| 4 July - 11 August 2007 |
Mujin-to Production
(Tokyo) |
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| This is the second exhibition for the six-artist team Chim↑Pom, which made a splash last year with its Super☆Rat event. Unlike that show, which had the urban rat as its theme, this one offers a diversity of works, many very funny: a "lust-electricity conversion device," for example, that generates electric power from incoming phone calls to a number the artists placed in a sexually suggestive newspaper ad. Other works, however, address environmental or political issues. |
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| Taro Izumi: Game pedestal (warehouse) |
| 23 June - 21 July 2007 |
Hiromi Yoshii
(Tokyo) |
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| A new installation by Izumi, whose work made a powerful impression at the recent Micropop exhibition. Izumi takes a room resembling a long-abandoned ruin and reconstructs it as a work of beauty through film and drawing. His video works, which recall a retro world of eighties-era video games with moving backgrounds and static characters, somehow express the fundamental, primitive essence of solitary play. |
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| Chikako Omori: On-the-Spot Inspection--The Forgotten Reality |
| 20 - 25 July 2007 |
AD&A Gallery
(Osaka) |
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| Whenever the scene of a crime appears on the news or in a detective drama, images of chalk outlines of the corpse and the little triangular signs used to label evidence are obligatory. When Omori finds a dead insect, she performs her own "on-the-spot inspection." A mosquito squashed on her finger, a grasshopper crushed between sliding screens, bug carcasses lying in the street -- all receive the same careful treatment, resulting in works that are at once comical and dark. |
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| Ernesto Neto |
| 15 July - 8 October 2007 |
Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art
(Kagawa) |
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| Born in 1964 in Rio de Janeiro, Neto is known for installations such as this vast tentlike space housing a softly lit organic world. Visitors sink into cushions of various sizes or negotiate low-ceilinged passages with kelp-like strips or blobs of cloth dangling down. A huge bag packed with spices stimulates the nose; the entire work massages all five senses. Visitors find it approachable and relaxing, especially kids who can be seen running, jumping, or falling fast asleep in its embrace. |
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| Kousagiuguisu Youna: Billy in Berlin 3 |
| 17 - 28 July 2007 |
gallery fukka
(Tokyo) |
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| Mimi Fuji, a.k.a. Kousagiuguisu Youna, introduces new work from his oeuvre of manga-based painting. Recent works have regularly featured a character named Billy in freeform scenarios of ambiguous meaning; the current batch are rendered in strong lines of oil-based ink. Though low-output artists seem to enjoy cachet these days, prolific workers like Youna and his contemporaries Chim↑Pom and Taro Izumi constantly offer new and refreshing surprises. |
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| Motonori Inagaki + mamoru: a lapse of memory |
| 23 July - 4 August 2007 |
O Gallery eyes
(Tokyo) |
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In this joint installation by Inagaki and mamoru (Mamoru Okuno), both born in the 1970s, images of trees, waves, and a woman's hair appear at random on three large monitors while equally random everyday sounds emanate from speakers on the walls. With virtually no likelihood of the same combination of patterns repeating, viewers/listeners find that a grasp of what they are experiencing eludes them as one world slips into another.
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| Yoko Miki: Kitchen |
| 28 July - 26 August 2007 |
Voice gallery w
(Kyoto) |
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| Miki's show features numerous ceramic objects with surreal touches, like her plates with mice running across them or the heads of fetuses protruding from them. Dishware occupies a central table while the walls are covered with installation-like displays of broken tiles and twisted piping. Oddly, these elements combine to suggest the re-creation of someone's actual room, like an alternate dimension to the everyday. |
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| Kawaiokamurama: Summertime Blues Animation |
| 5 - 26 August 2007 |
Kyoto Art Center
(Tokyo) |
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| Video artist team Kawai/Okamura have exhibited around Japan and overseas, but this show, featuring works from 2000 on, is the first in their Kyoto hometown in some time. A labyrinth of nonsense that appears to revolve around the mystery word "hekohyon," their work follows no recognizable scenario; trying to make sense of it will only leave the viewer with a headful of question marks. The fun is in cobbling your own reality together out of the puzzle pieces. |
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| Shunsaku Hishikari: Comic Collage |
| 2 - 14 July 2007 |
Gallery Beaux
(Tokyo) |
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| As the title suggests, these works are collages of manga (cartoon) components, characters and speech balloons. Making a lattice out of female body lines from an erotic manga, creating a chrysanthemum pattern out of radiating speech balloons, or turning characters like Miffy or Hello Kitty into bizarre monsters, Hishikari uses familiar images to get outlandish results. |
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