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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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| Kanazawa Art Platform 2008 |
| 4 October - 7 December 2008 |
19 venues in Kanazawa City
(Ishikawa) |
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| Launched by Yuji Akimoto, the new curator of Kanazawa's 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, this exhibition aims to disperse works of art all over the city's downtown. Such contributions as Atelier Bow-Wow's resuscitation of a 120-year-old townhouse as a community space and Masato Nakamura's conversion of an empty building into an art center represent superb critiques of Japan's cultural bureaucracy. |
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| Makoto Saito: SCENE [0] |
| 2 August - 3 November 2008 |
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
(Ishikawa) |
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| Formerly a graphic designer, Saito paints portraits of human beings in the process of disintegration. His eye-grabbing works have a painterly touch, but on closer inspection they bear a resemblance to digitally processed images culled from movies. |
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Yokohama Triennale 2008: Time Crevasse |
| 13 September - 30 November 2008 |
Various venues around Yokohama Port
(Kanagawa) |
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| This year's Triennale, Yokohama's third, suffers from a shocking lack of information on venues or descriptions of the art displayed therein. The exhibit spaces themselves are well-designed, but it's difficult to get a handle on the overall purport of the event. The cryptic subtitle is no help. |
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| paramodel: P-naru omoi ("P-like thoughts") |
| 30 August - 11 October 2008 |
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Mori Yu Gallery Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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| Consisting of Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano, the art unit paramodel works off the poetic concept of "models or blueprints of paradise and paradox, assembled from components found in the world and the mind." This wall-size installation is constructed mostly of gray plastic piping. |
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| Extended Senses: Present of Japanese/Korean Media Art |
| 23 September - 3 November 2008 |
NTT InterCommunication Center
(Tokyo) |
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This joint Japanese-Korean show, which previously appeared in Korea, features works by nine artists or art units on the general themes of the distinctive expressive grammar of media art and the different creative approaches taken by Japanese and Korean artists. With media art today undergoing an explosive diversification, this exhibit amply reveals the degree to which the genre defies definition.
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| Diorama of the City: Between Site & Space |
| 13 September - 13 October 2008 |
Tokyo Wonder Site, Shibuya
(Tokyo) |
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| Part of a Japan-Australia exchange program, this group show, which will move to Sydney next year, features works produced on-site by three artists or art units from Japan and Australia respectively. Noteworthy is the space constructed by Exonemo, which thrusts one into a lopsided space-time continuum between a large dysfunctional clock and a wall monitor showing an image of a real clock in motion. |
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| Miharu Shibata: Complex |
| 7 - 10 October 2008 |
Gallery Haneusagi
(Kyoto) |
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| Photographer Shibata displays works with her own body as the subject. The title refers to complexes about physical appearance and their bodies that for many women translate into other fears and anxieties. These vivid images evoke both an honest, introspective view of the self and a glimpse into the conflicts therein. |
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| Spiders' Silken Creations: What a Wonderful Web! |
| 4 September - 22 November 2008 |
INAX Gallery 1
(Tokyo) |
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| Delicate white web patterns on an indigo background: the artist is not a painter or printmaker, but an actual spider. These images of real spider webs were produced by spraying the webs with white spray and applying them to blue backing paper. The patterns woven by Nature are truly exquisite, in and of themselves. |
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| Akinori Matsumoto |
| 24 September - 11 October 2008 |
a piece of space APS
(Tokyo) |
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| For this installation, Matsumoto has constructed ten "birds" out of clumps of feathers and placed them in bamboo birdcages. After you have been gazing at them for a while, the feathers suddenly start shaking and the bells around the birds' necks start ringing. The low-tech, arbitrary nature of the work speaks of the limitless permutations of chance. |
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| Yuumi Domoto: After All |
| 26 September - 25 November 2008 |
Gallery Koyanagi
(Tokyo) |
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| Domoto paints soft, indistinct backgrounds in warm yellows, reds and oranges, atop which dance patterns of cold, hard blue-gray lines. Her color sense is inimitable, while the random, abstract patterns can be oddly terrifying; they resemble human figures falling upside-down through space. |
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