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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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Kenichi Takasu: Surface
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| 2 - 14 February 2010 |
neutron kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| What are obviously the monogram patterns of famous brands lie scattered across the gallery. Scraps of advertising leaflets and magazines litter every inch of the floor like fallen leaves. The artist says his materials consist entirely of trash he picked up. The first impression is, indeed, of cheap superficiality, but the colorful patterns and their balanced placement are exquisite to behold. |
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| Michio Horikawa |
| 8 - 20 February 2010 |
Gallery Hinoki
(Tokyo) |
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| Horikawa's rhythmical perpendicular lines, painted in blue, are rich with nuance. They could be waterfalls, or auroras. A member of the Niigata-based contemporary art group GUN in the late sixties, Horikawa has been concentrating on painting since the eighties. |
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Rafael Rozendaal: I'm good |
| 23 January - 20 February 2010 |
Takuro Someya Contemporary Art
(Chiba) |
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| Amsterdam-born Rozendaal, who "lives and works in hotels" on his website art and animated installations, creates explosions that infinitely repeat, landscapes that never end, blood that drips from a wound opened by the click of a mouse. Of interest is the fact that he displays and markets his compositions online, but what he actually sells is just the domain with his work on it. His contract with the collector requires that the work remain accessible for public view. |
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Kyoto Open Studio 2010 |
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| (Kyoto) |
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| This second annual open studio in the ancient capital made eight ateliers available for concurrent viewing of the work of local artists. A highlight was Light Studio, located in the Uzumasa district on the west side of town, a collective of five graduates from Kyoto City University of Arts. |
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| The Last Works of Graduates 2010 |
| 12 - 19 February 2010 |
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| The 38th annual exhibition by students graduating from the Tokyo Metropolitan High School for Music and Fine Arts, this year's crop included a number of noteworthy works, such as hiyocco's mangaesque paintings from everyday life. Still, it gave this reviewer pause to learn that of the 40 exhibitors, only four were male: three in oil painting and one in design. All the students working in Nihonga and sculpture were female. |
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| Tomoaki Suzuki |
| 22 January - 20 February 2010 |
SCAI The Bathhouse
(Tokyo) |
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| Four miniaturized human figures, each about 50 or 60 centimeters high, stand on the concrete floor of the gallery. They range from young punk rockers to a middle-aged black man with a suitcase, each one meticulously carved from wood and unnervingly lifelike. |
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| Enrico Isamu Oyama + Ryuichi Ogino: InsideOut of Contexts + Taki Tamada: Tamamushi |
| 20 February - 7 March 2010 |
ZAIM
(Kanagawa) |
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| Winners of ZAIM Competition 2009 shared billing at the now-closed ZAIM complex, a fine old brick building that has provided studio and gallery space for young artists in Yokohama's harbor district for the past five years, but now must be renovated to conform to local earthquake ordinances. Oyama and Ogino's "InsideOut" earned accolades for its "post-graffiti" hijacking of historical and social contexts, but the work itself lacks the deviant quality of real graffiti. Tamada's "Tamamushi" filled ZAIM's outdoor cafe space with a nest of giant cardboard eggs that grew and propagated daily, culminating in a tableau of dinosaur-like fossils. |
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| Collection/Selection 02 |
| 13 February - 13 March 2010 |
Gallery Caption
(Gifu) |
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| This gallery in Gifu city introduces work by 12 artists from its collection -- Syoichi Ida, Keiji Ito, Masato Ito, Oscar Oiwa, Yuichi Otake, Mio Kaneda, Masaki Kawada, Saiko Kimura, Yasuhiro Sakima, Syuko Terada, Yukio Fujimoto, and Naoko Yurikusa. The venue's approach to exhibiting is itself of interest: Kawada's manuscript-size sheets of paper, inscribed with short texts, waft gently in the breeze of the air conditioning system from the hallway walls on which they seem very casually hung, while Terada's small works are arranged on the frames of the gallery windows. |
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| Masumi Kura: "Kura's Visit to Ise" |
19 February - 13 March 2010
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Zeit-Foto Salon
(Tokyo) |
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| Kura's recently completed photo pilgrimage to Ise began in 2003 at Nihonbashi in central Tokyo, from which she followed the old Tokaido Road on the several-hundred-kilometer trek to Japan's most revered shrine. Using a 6x6 format camera, she took a series of medium-distance snapshots that cumulatively produce a “half-baked” effect. That is not a criticism, because this very “half-bakedness” eloquently captures the essence of contemporary Japan. |
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| Seiko Watanabe: "Denial" |
| 23 - 28 February 2010 |
Akarui Heya
(Tokyo) |
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| The exhibition is divided into two parts, photos and text. Though it's hard to discern Watanabe's intent, her juxtaposition of the two media sets up an axis between poles of monochrome and color, certainty and uncertainty, fluid and fixed. The viewer is drawn into a labyrinth of conflicting thoughts and impressions until these opposing poles -- including the overall theme of affirmation vs. denial -- collapse into each other, revealing that they are merely two sides of the same phenomenon. |
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