 |
Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering short reviews of exhibitions at museums and galleries in recent weeks, with an emphasis on contemporary art by young artists. |
|
|
 |
Toshiya Takahama:
Supplement / House in Koide |
| 4 - 23 February 2008 |
Gallery Natsuka
(Tokyo) |
|
Printmaker Takahama exhibits some 30 new prints and drawings produced to supplement projects on themes related to architecture, cities and society. Of special note are those of the "House in Koide," a vacated farmhouse that Takahama reconstructed as part of Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2006, an event held in the rural Tsumari region of Niigata Prefecture.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Taisuke Makihara |
| 8 February - 2 March 2008 |
Shiseido Gallery
(Tokyo) |
|
| Part of the "shiseido art egg" exhibition series, Makihara's installation confronts us with a forest of three-meter high music stands holding 205 cymbals. His work plays with the function, scale and time frame of familiar objects (in this show, musical instruments), altering their contexts to challenge our senses and assumptions. |
|
|
 |
|
Tadashi Kawamata: Walkway |
| 9 February - 13 April 2008 |
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
|
| Kawamata has turned the exhibition space into a "walkway" tracing his own 30-year journey as an artist. A plywood corridor leads the viewer to past works, maquettes, laboratories, even a café. Of particular interest is an archive room full of catalogues, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, photos and videos exhaustively documenting Kawamata's career. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Masujyo: Woman of the Sand |
| 11 - 24 February 2008 |
Gallery Neutron
(Kyoto) |
|
| In this installation Tottori-born Masujyo (Noriko Masuda) uses sand from Tottori's famous dunes, circular panels painted with natural mineral pigments, and round mirrors (known since ancient times for their magical power) which she has cut away and painted over with images of her own weeping face. Her art literally reflects a fascination with ancient myths and traditions. |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Naoko Ochi |
| 19 February - 2 March 2008 |
Voice Gallery pfs
(Kyoto) |
|
| Ochi makes blue ink drawings filled with fine lines from a 0.1-mm tip pen. Close examination reveals flowers and flowerpots of various species and shapes that appear to be propagating themselves across the paper. But in total they form vast natural landscapes of steep cliffs and waterfalls. |
|
|
 |
|
Oh Haji: Slipping through the Texture -- Moment of Silence |
| 9 February - 2 March 2008 |
Voice Gallery w
(Kyoto) |
|
| A huge piece of fabric, with loosely woven warp and weft, hangs from a wall facing a window and spreads across the gallery floor. The light from the window filters through the cloth, illuminating distinctions between areas where there is only warp and others where warp and weft overlap. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Chiho Yamashita: Territory |
| 18 - 23 February 2008 |
Gallery wks.
(Osaka) |
|
| This is a series of photos of house gates, ranging from imposing wooden structures reminiscent of feudal samurai mansions to modern portals of steel or aluminum. A student at Seian University of Art and Design, Yamashita says they are all houses in her community and that she obtained the owners' permission for every shot, though the most intriguing are of large estates viewed surreptitiously through slightly-ajar gates. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Hiromi Yamauchi |
| 18 - 23 February 2008 |
O Gallery eyes
(Osaka) |
|
| Yamauchi's paintings are based on photos she has taken, mostly of the play of sunlight shining through trees. She extracts fragments of these scenes and converts them to dot patterns, yielding abstract images that provoke uncertainty in the viewer about the object seen as well as the viewing process itself. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Emily Kame Kngwarreye: Utopia |
| 26 February - 13 April 2008 |
National Museum of Art, Osaka
(Osaka) |
|
| Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) was an Australian Aborigine artist from the community of Utopia in the Northern Territory. Self-taught, she began painting abstract acrylic works late in life that earned her worldwide fame. Depicting on canvas Aborigine traditions and legends that previously found expression only on sand or in bodily ornaments, the works in this retrospective pulse with rhythmic, dynamic motifs of dots, lines, and color. |
|
|
|
 |
|
Aiko Miyanaga: Personal Site |
| 16 - 17 February 2008 |
Fukakusa, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
|
Miyanaga's work reflects the intrusion and passage of time in this site-specific installation. As one enters the darkened building in Fushimi, Kyoto, where the artist grew up in close proximity to the Miyanaga Tozan ceramics studio, one can hear faint sounds like glass striking against a hard surface.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
