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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.
1 June 2010
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Suspending Time: Life - Photography - Death
3 April - 20 August 2010
Izu Photo Museum, Shizuoka
(Shizuoka)
The works gathered here are memorial photographs of the deceased -- the sort one commonly sees placed on the altars at Japanese funerals. There is nothing "special" about these portraits, yet to view them is a thrilling and fulfilling experience, for they vividly evoke the power of photography to "suspend its subjects between life and death." If curators had more sense, there would be more such exhibitions at other art museums in Japan.

Resonance
3 April - 20 June 2010
Suntory Museum
(Osaka)
Of the twenty participants in this contemporary art retrospective, half are painters, many of them prominent veterans like Yayoi Kusama, Mark Rothko, Anselm Kiefer, Marlene Dumas, and Leiko Ikemura. But the non-painters more than hold their own, highlights being Wolfgang Laib's milk-covered marble slabs; Motohiko Odani's muscular horse-and-rider sculptures; Janet Cardiff's church hymns emanating from forty speakers; and most strikingly, Ryan Gander's floor-level peephole installation in a dark room, revealing a world of bright light and green vegetation beyond.
Ito Jakuchu
19 March - 13 June 2010
Kotohiragu
(Kagawa)
The Kotohiragu shrine on Shikoku island is home to some renowned murals by the legendary artist Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800). Last year the Kyoto National Museum completed restoration work on the shrine's inner Jodan-no-Ma room, which contains Ito's Hanamaru-zu (Pictures of Flowers). Normally closed to the public, the room is open for viewing this year until mid-June. An adjoining exhibit compares the pre- and post-restoration Hanamaru-zu, amply demonstrating how much work was done on certain parts of the mural, particularly on the colors.
Manet et le Paris moderne

6 April - 25 July 2010
Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
(Tokyo)
Designed by British architect Josiah Conder and completed in 1894 as downtown Tokyo's first modern office building, the red-brick Mitsubishi Ichigokan is a fine example of Queen Anne architecture. The original was torn down in 1968, but the edifice has now returned to life as an art museum. Commemorating its April 2010 reopening is Manet et le Paris moderne. While "The Luncheon on the Grass" and "Olympia" are missed, we do get "Lola de Valence," "Émile Zola," and "Berthe Morisot" -- all in all, one of the most definitive Manet exhibitions in Japan to date.
Shigeru Hasegawa: "What Motifs?!"

10 April - 11 July 2010
Fuchu Art Museum
(Tokyo)
Hasegawa made his debut in the 1990s with oil paintings of such things as ginger and meat. Inexplicable subject matter aside, his works revealed an impressive sureness of line and sense of color. Hasegawa's latest pieces are no different in this regard, though his motifs now run toward even more surreal images composed of cucumbers and bananas (forming text-like symbols, or human faces) and other Magritte-like juxtapositions. In effect, "motifs" serve Hasegawa as nothing more than arbitrary launching points for his creative imagination.
European Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

17 April - 20 June 2010
Mori Arts Center Gallery
(Tokyo)
The Mori has borrowed some of the brightest stars in the art firmament from Boston -- Rembrandt, Millet, Monet, Van Gogh -- but these are not exactly national-treasure-class works. Perhaps the gallery's location on the 52nd floor of a skyscraper makes such loans problematic. Still, it's worth the climb to see Monet's "Rouen Cathedral, Façade," Degas's "At the Races in the Country," or Van Gogh's "Houses at Auvers." The show moves on to Kyoto, but for some reason not to the MFA's sister museum in Nagoya.
Mayuko Morita and Kyoko Nakamura

14 - 30 May 2010
Atelier Tomo
(Kyoto)
Nakamura has lately made a name for herself with humorous works like the 240-meter-long drawing she wrapped around a department store last year. Morita, meanwhile, superimposes video images atop collages or paintings to produce "storytelling landscape patterns." One wondered how these artists would integrate two such disparate approaches in a small space like Atelier Tomo, but they have managed to create their own mini-wonderland there.

Yuriko Terazaki: Music

9 April - 29 May 2010
Gallery Koyanagi
(Tokyo)
Terazaki's meticulous pencil renderings of violins, organs and other musical instruments reminded this reviewer of the work of Yuri Ogawa, who is represented by the same gallery. Turns out they are one and the same person. So why the name change?

Hisaji Hara: a photographic portrayal on the paintings of Balthus II

6 April - 22 May 2010
gallery bauhaus
(Tokyo)
This is the second show of Hara's Balthus-themed photographic compositions. Reinventing the artist's legendary portraits of young girls and boys in a distinctly Japanese setting, Hara has made the intriguing choice of clothing his models in school uniforms, notably the girls' middy-blouse-and-skirt ensemble that is the infamous object of Lolitesque obsession in Japan. Even as they cleverly mix and match elements of eastern and western dress culture, Hara's tableaux exude the same poignant longing for youthful innocence so palpable in Balthus's images.
Megumi Sakakibara
20 - 25 April 2010
Gallery Suzuki
(Kyoto)
Sakakibara's landscapes are filled with round, puffy trees that resemble balloons floating over a background of bright greens, pinks and blues. The artist says that she gets her inspiration from mochi rice cakes, which sounds hilarious -- but there is a depth to her color fields that reveals itself through prolonged scrutiny. When viewed alongside the new greenery visible through the gallery windows, these images give off a memorable whiff of spring.
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