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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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1 September 2008 |
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| Art Brut / Crossing Spirit |
| 24 May - 20 July 2008 |
Shiodome Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| Art Brut (literally "raw" or "rough" art, the equivalent of Outsider Art in English) was a term coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created by people who had not received formal artistic training. This traveling exhibit of works from the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland includes works by a dozen Japanese "outsider" artists. |
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| Taro Chiezo: Two Towers |
| 27 June - 6 August 2008 |
Dai-Ichi Life Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Subtitled "Phantom Above Buildings, Mountain, and Water" and referencing the Twin Towers destroyed on September 11, 2001, this show by multimedia artist Chiezo consists of ten paintings and two sculptures, including works that do indeed suggest a pair of buildings with smoke rising from them. |
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Ken Nakazawa |
| 1 July - 23 August 2008 |
Ando Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Painter and installation artist Nakazawa displays six oil paintings and three drawings in this solo show. (He also creates installations out of materials like wire and fishing line.) This year represents a fresh start for the Ando Gallery, which has been closed since the eighties, when it was a pioneer in hard-edged contemporary art. |
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| Masako Ishizuka: Garden |
| 25 June - 12 July 2008 |
APS
(Tokyo) |
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| A painter of abstracts early in her career, Ishizuka underwent a transformation that led to the large monochrome triptych that makes up this exhibition. Though somewhat resembling a traditional sumi-ink screen painting in its naturalistic portrayal of grass, trees and water, Ishizuka's "Garden" brims with the energy of the life force. |
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| Ayako Shiraishi, Naoto Kashiwagi, Yui Ishibashi, Nao Kaneko, Kojiro Takakuwa |
| 30 June - 5 July 2008 |
Gallery Q
(Tokyo) |
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| Featuring paintings and sculptures by five young artists (four were born in the eighties) fresh out of art school, this joint exhibition's theme is "showing what cannot be seen, giving voice to what cannot be heard." |
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| Takao Inoue |
| 6 June - 5 July 2008 |
Muramatsu Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Discarded objects lie around the floor -- the oar of a boat, an altar frame, a door -- but all are twice their normal size. The artist has faithfully created exact reproductions of the real things, down to their color and texture, using recycled paper. |
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| Susumu Shimonishi: I am, I am |
| 1 - 29 July 2008 |
INAX Gallery 2
(Tokyo) |
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| In video artist Shimonishi's work "I am on the air," he shoots guerrilla-like footage on the location of a local TV program, which he replays in parallel with a broadcast of the actual show. His other works give ample vent to a similar quirky humor. |
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| Takehiko Sanada: Sense of Touch |
| 2 - 22 July 2008 |
Galerie Tokyo Humanité
(Tokyo) |
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| Sculptor and fabric artist Sanada has produced a series of objects by winding silk or wool thread into the shape of globes, eggs, tadpoles and the like; they range in size from berries to watermelons. Hold one in your hand and you will find it is much heavier than it looks. |
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| Chim Pom: Japanese art is 10 years behind |
| 7 - 27 July 2008 |
NADiff A/P/A/R/T
(Tokyo) |
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| This new incarnation of the NADiff (for "New Art Diffusion) art bookshop occupies part of a five-story complex in Ebisu with several spaces devoted to contemporary art. For the inaugural show in its own gallery, the bookstore offers an installation by the wild and crazy art unit Chim Pom, which further declares that "world art is 7 or 8 years behind." |
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| Yosuke Amemiya: Whiplash neuron; Kei Takemura: Apart a part |
| 28 June - 31 August 2008 |
Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya
(Kyoto) |
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| Both born in 1975, Amemiya and Takemura have been selected as artists no. 13 and 14 of TEAM (Tokyo Wonder Site: Emerging Artists on Mezzanine). Amemiya's sinister yet childlike installation includes a field of melting apple sculptures, while Takemura's installation includes layered drawings, photographs, and translucent fabric, as well as objects like broken coffee cups wrapped in silk thread. |
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