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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 February 2008 |
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| Arata Nojima |
| 26 November - 1 December 2007 |
Ban Garow
(Osaka) |
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| Printmaker Nojima depicts seas and forests with a soft focus reminiscent of pictorialist photography. One remarkable five-print series takes a fixed-point observation approach to the rising of the sun from the horizon. Says the artist, "I wanted to make prints that convey sensations of water and light." |
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| Masataka Nakano: My Lost America |
| 13 November - 5 December 2007 |
Little More Chika
(Tokyo) |
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| Known for Tokyo Nobody, his book of photographs of curiously deserted Tokyo streets, Nakano here exhibits photos he took in the 1980s of American cities and their inhabitants. In contrast to the Tokyo series, these images overflow with humanity, yet the people in them appear strangely doll-like -- an unsettling clash of impressions. |
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Yuriko Yamamoto |
| 16 November - 9 December 2007 |
Shin-bi
(Kyoto) |
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| A door stands in the center of a darkened room with a leaf-strewn floor; a book sits on a nearby shelf. Following the instructions in the book, you peer through the door's peephole and see an utterly different world. Without thinking, you open the door . . . It's a simple yet magical device for drawing the visitor into a fairy tale-like alternate reality. |
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| Katsunori Yaoita: Huts |
| 5 - 23 December 2007 |
iTohen
(Osaka)
| Yaoita's ceramic objects truly resemble primitive shacks, with cracked and peeling walls slapped up against tottering columns. Though new, the pieces look as if they have endured years of wind, rain and snow. Other sculptures on display, notably his small ceramic slabs, exude the same weathered, subdued intensity. |
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| Kyoko Nakamura: Unrecoverable Memories |
| 3 - 8 December 2007 |
O Gallery Eyes
(Osaka) |
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| The works on display look like the show-and-tell scribblings of children, but they are all made by Nakamura, who says she faithfully copied childhood drawings unearthed by her and various friends. Heartwarming at first glance, they prove to be merely the facade for a vast, empty wasteland. |
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| Takashi Kunitani: The Vertical Horizon |
| 4 - 22 December 2007 |
Osaka Contemporary Art Center
(Osaka) |
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| With Kunitani's installations, their placement as much as the works themselves expresses the temporal and spatial essence of his art. Gallery A contains "Spaceless Space," a two-layer row of 48 red neon tubes bisecting space, and "Sand Sculpture," in which sand scooped from one sand pile is poured into a bottomless hourglass suspended above another pile. Gallery B features "Sign," seven pieces made of twisted white neon tubes. |
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| Nobuaki Onishi: 3℃ |
| 1 - 22 December 2007 |
Studio J
(Osaka) |
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| The use of lace in artwork is not unheard of, but printmaker Onishi does something different, silk-screening a montage of antique lace patterns onto tulle fabric. At first glance the lace appears to form an ordinary, unbroken pattern, but a closer look reveals gaps and overlaps caused by the printing process, adding a discomfiting element to the conventional delicacy of lace. |
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| Keiko Nishioka: Fully Earnest |
| 4 - 9 December 2007 |
Gallery Maronie
(Kyoto) |
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| Large clumps of cloth scraps, stuffed dolls, accessories and other odds and ends are sewn together into a monstrous apparition of "junk." Nishioka's theme is decoration; her aim is to break through the art world's bias against works labeled decorative or ornamental and find a way to bring them into the fold of fine art. |
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| Kayoko Yamanaka |
| 1 - 24 December 2007 |
Gallery Kai
(Osaka) |
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| This first solo show in five years for Yamanaka, who took a break from photography to raise her child, does not feature different locales as in her past work, but focuses exclusively on children. The images reflect the everyday routines and townscapes of the suburban Kobe community where she lives. Yamanaka's objective eye and studied distance from her subjects express a distinctive aesthetic. |
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| Sumi Group Sho: SUMI 3-way exhibition |
| 1 - 9 December 2007 |
Makii Masaru Fine Arts
(Tokyo) |
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| Tomoko Kawao, Akico Suzuki, and Noriyuki Fukunishi make up the avant-garde calligraphy group Sho. All three work with the medium of sumi (charcoal ink) in distinct ways. Inspired, she says, by severe skin allergies, Kawao in particular creates abstract, complexly layered works that suggest tissue specimens under a microscope. |
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