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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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| Sori Yanagi: Shapes of Living, Born of the Hands |
| 16 May - 28 June 2009 |
Matsumoto City Museum of Art
(Nagano) |
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| This retrospective of venerable designer Yanagi (1915-) includes prototypes and plans of his vast oeuvre of furniture, utensils, tools and public structures. Masterpieces like the Butterfly Stool are well known, but what surprises is the range of his work: everything from the entrance of the Kan'etsu Expressway Tunnel to a map of Yokohama's Noge Park. Yanagi's tireless testing of his prototypes testifies to his resourcefulness and empathy with the end users of his creations. |
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| Chang Chao-Tang: Years In, Years Out |
| 1 - 12 June 2009 |
Place M
(Tokyo) |
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| One of Taiwan's leading photographers, Chang (1943-) is revered in his homeland by young and old alike. This show focuses on works from the 1970s on: high-contrast monochrome snapshots of what appear to be surreal masque performances staged in odd settings. (Many of his subjects do indeed wear masks or heavy makeup.) The gallery lighting switches on and off in response to the movement of visitors, further enhancing the mystique of the images. |
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Kenzo Tamoto: Hakodate Seaport - Record of Water Supply Works |
| 8 May - 7 June 2009 |
Photographers' Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Tamoto (1831-1912) set up a photo studio in Hakodate, Hokkaido early in the Meiji period and recorded the development of infrastructure -- roads, harbors, buildings -- on Japan's northernmost island. This show features 14 prints made by Tamoto in 1897 of work being done on Hakodate harbor. The photographic technique and subject matter are snapshots of Japan's modernization process, but Tamoto transcends his assignment with expressive images of waves crashing on breakwaters. |
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| Keizo Kitajima: Portraits |
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Rat Hole Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Kitajima has been adding to his "Portraits" series since 1992. Male and female models face the camera wearing the same nondescript white shirt, at the same distance, with the same framing, flat lighting and white background. The current show includes four portraits of a "middle-aged Asian male," six of a "young Asian male" and four of a "young Asian female." In each series only the subject's hairstyle and facial wrinkles vary ever so slightly from portrait to portrait. |
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| Shin Yanagisawa: Photographs |
| 2 - 28 June 2009 |
JCII Camera Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| Born in Tokyo in 1936, Yanagisawa became known in the sixties for his unaffected snapshots, tinged with pathos, of scenes encountered on his travels. He died in 2008 after a long bout with cancer. This retrospective focuses on his work in the sixties and seventies, when Japan's booming economy fomented plenty of artistic sturm und drang. But Yanagisawa steadfastly stripped his images of any extraneous emotion; what remains speaks to his integrity as a seeker of depth and breadth in photography. |
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| Satomi Fukushima: Is My Will the Will of Cells? |
| 9 - 21 June 2009 |
Gallery Iteza
(Kyoto) |
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| Fukushima drips red ink onto washi paper, covering the sheet with countless dots and splotches. These works in turn cover the gallery walls, such that one feels hemmed in by a chaotic mass of blood cells splitting and jostling as they multiply. Closer inspection reveals an unearthly beauty in the variegated blobs of red ink, but also something unsettling, like worlds colliding in space. The artist eloquently conveys her perception of the link between the blind life-urge of primitive organisms and her own existence. |
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| Yukiko Saito & Hiroaki Katsui: SPOT/DRAW |
| 2 - 13 June 2009 |
galerie 16
(Kyoto) |
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| Both of these young artists (still in their twenties) paint with dots, but there the similarity ends. Katsui's dots seem to be in an orderly arrangement that initially offers little information beyond color, but rewards the patient viewer with revelations of depth and beauty, like looking at the world through a magnifying lens. Saito's images, with their blends of color and lyrical plant and landscape motifs, tell a story that you cannot quite grasp, but keep coming back to. Each style has its charm. |
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| Taro Yamamoto: Nippon-ga Sightseeing Trip |
| 22 May - 14 June 2009 |
JR Kyoto Isetan “Eki” Museum
(Kyoto) |
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| This retrospective covers the ten-year career of Yamamoto, who won the 2007 VOCA Prize and labels his work "Nippon-ga", a westernized slant on Japanese-style painting. While his techniques and materials are traditional, his attitude is contemporary and downright hilarious. If anything, his humor has grown more refined over the years: some of the jokes now require a knowledge of context, as in his scenes taken from Noh chants. But never is his work affected or show-offy. |
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| Satoko Matsui: a ghost |
| 9 - 14 June 2009 |
gallery neutron
(Kyoto) |
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| Matsui's works address the gap between media- and fashion-inspired images of our bodies and their reality. The drawings in this exhibition depict arms, fingers and other body parts as well as the seams and wrinkles in the clothing on them. Her clean lines are erased in places or interspersed with random bubble patterns, frustrating the eye's effort to distinguish between figure and ground. Matsui's novel method of portraying the empty vessel that is the human body amply expresses both its power of presence and its ephemerality. |
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| Shouhei Kawasaki: Grand Open |
| 17 - 25 June 2009 |
Creative Space 9001
(Kanagawa) |
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| Famous for coining the term "net café refugees," author and photographer Kawasaki offers a solo show of still photos and films that manage to look both offhandedly casual and artistically accomplished. His video of pachinko balls pouring out of a machine, shot with a cell phone camera, is particularly lovely. The gallery is located in the now-defunct Sakuragicho station on Yokohama's Toyoko Line. |
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