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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. |
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Wonder Seeds 2008 |
| 8 - 27 March 2008 |
Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya
(Tokyo) |
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This is the sixth year for Wonder Seeds, Tokyo Wonder Site's annual public subscription exhibition to support young artists by encouraging the public to buy their works. Sales, slow in the first years, took off when online marketing was introduced last year. The 2008 show features 107 works, nearly all of which had been sold at this writing.
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| Yoshiko Haraguchi: The Forest of Baumkuchen |
| 26 February - 29 March 2008 |
Fukugan Gallery
(Osaka) |
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| This series of a dozen photographs, taken in Finland, depict deer and other animals against a sheer white snowy landscape. The figures of the animals stand out in delicate contrast to the white background, where land and sky are indistinguishable. |
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Artist in Fukuoka in the 21st Century Vol. 8 - Wada Chiaki: The Art of Different Abilities X - Prayer |
| 5 January - 30 March 2008 |
Fukuoka Art Museum
(Fukuoka) |
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| Wada is an advocate of art by and about people with disabilities. This show includes an installation of assistance equipment as well as paintings of his own child, who is disabled. Whereas Wada's earlier work had a strong contemporary edge with its juxtaposition of training aids and ambiguous texts, the works here confront his themes head-on, delivering an even more powerful message about the problems faced by the disabled. |
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| Aurora |
| 1 - 30 March 2008 |
PANTALOON
(Osaka) |
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| This exhibition brings together paintings and drawings by artist HIMAA and illustrators Izumi Shiokawa, Asami Hattori, and Noritake. The subtle commonality of their styles and thoughtful placement of their works creates a space with a distinctive density. Indeed, it feels more like an installation than a conventional four-person show. |
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"Welcome Back Shudan Kumo" |
| 11 - 30 March 2008 |
GALLERY SOAP
(Fukuoka) |
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| Shudan Kumo (Group Spider) was a Fukuoka-based avant-garde art movement active in the sixties. This retrospective includes the group's provocative fliers and works like Yasuhide Moriyama's perfectly plagiarized copies of woodblock prints by Mokuma Kikuhata, a member of the older avant-garde group Kyushu-ha (Group Kyushu) that was the butt of Shudan Kumo's attacks. |
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daily life |
| 20 - 30 March 2008 |
ZAIM
(Kanagawa) |
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| Part of ZAIM Festa, Yokohama's annual arts festival, this six-artist show filled a studio in one of the old refurbished buildings ZAIM occupies in the city's harbor district. Standouts include Francis Shingo's single-painting installation in a tiny room, Asae Soya's similarly refreshing mini-exhibition, and Maki Takimoto's paper stencils affixed to windows. |
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Ho Ming-Kuei: Himono Onna's Final Call |
| 21 - 30 March 2008 |
BankART Studio NYK
(Kanagawa) |
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| This show introduces work produced by Ho while she was in residence with BankART as part of an exchange program with Taipei International Arts Village. Now in its third year, the program has brought three Taiwanese artists to Japan, all of them women. Ho, who is also a curator, here offers surrealistic drawings on themes of disaster: explosions, fires, tsunamis. |
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Shinji Shimokura: Suisaishiki
(Water Color) |
| 18 - 23 March 2008 |
Nadar Osaka
(Osaka) |
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| In the course of his favorite pastime, fishing, Shimokura shoots black and white photos of the surfaces of water. The patterns -- particularly on winter lakes -- are variegated and expressive in themselves, but Shimokura's meticulous control of the process produces images with a beauty that seems a further step removed from reality. He mentions employing the "zone system" technique formulated by Ansel Adams. |
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Toshiharu Fujii |
| 10 - 15 March 2008 |
O Gallery eyes
(Osaka) |
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| Fujii's semi-abstract oil paintings ostensibly delineate human figures, but as seen through the lens of a thermal camera, an infrared device that records the surface temperature of objects. This visual expression of body heat -- normally something only sensed through touch -- carries suggestions of an alternative reality. |
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Tetsushi Higashino: WKM/OO |
| 23 February - 16 March 2008 |
Art Center Ongoing
(Tokyo) |
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This is an installation all about wakame, the edible seaweed. The walls are covered with tiny pieces of dried wakame shaped into human figures; a video depicts an infinite proliferation of commercial dried wakame packages; a wig on display mimics the hairstyle of the cartoon character Wakame; and a cup of water full of reconstituted wakame sits on a pedestal.
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