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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.
2 August 2010
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Gozo Yoshimasu: The Garden of Blind Gold
18 June - 8 August 2010
BLD Gallery
(Tokyo)
Poet Yoshimasu commemorates the publication (by Iwanami Shoten) of a new anthology of his photographic work with an exhibition by the same title. A versatile artist also known for his essays, performances, videos, and copperplate prints, Yoshimasu remains, ultimately, a poet. Here he employs multiple exposure techniques to introduce a strong element of chance into his work, creating photos that amply reflect his shamanistic persona.

Mamoru Sakagawa: Works 2001-2010
23 May - 26 June 2010
Kodama Gallery
(Tokyo)
This installation at a gallery in Tokyo's hip Shirokane district highlights the vivid colors and blurred lines with which Sakagawa paints ambiguous images reminiscent of Sadamasa Motonaga or glitter-eyed characters straight out of girls' manga. Scrawled on canvas, sheets and cloth scraps, these works ostensibly represent a digest of his past decade of output. Though they appear haphazard and designed primarily for the artist's own entertainment, one can see the gradual emergence of a solid core amid the random experimentation.
Kei Imazu: Flash
22 May - 19 June 2010
Yamamoto Gendai
(Tokyo)
Painter Imazu assembles images from magazines or the Internet and reproduces them in distorted layers on canvas. The subject matter tends to the dark side of social commentary, but the compositions are painterly and the colors gorgeous.
Hiroomi Sahara: The Effect of Some Smoke

31 May - 12 June 2010
Galerie Omotesando
(Tokyo)
"The Effect of Some Smoke" is a series of photos Sahara took at the funerals of seven relatives who passed away in recent years. Snapshots of ceremonial family occasions are a dime a dozen, but Sahara's approach is subtly different from the norm. Instead of focusing on the relationship between the photographer and his family, as most do, he maintains an objective eye, coolly catching the participants in unguarded moments. His companion color film work, sakichi, maintains a compelling tension for 35 minutes.
Yoshikazu Miki: Photogenic

1 - 13 June 2010
Akarui Heya
(Tokyo)
One of the founders of the Akarui Heya (Bright Room) gallery, Miki displays his creative powers as a photographer to full effect in this show of 28 monochrome portraits. He describes his procedure as follows: "I place a strobe in front of a black curtain. I have subject A take my picture, then I take theirs. I repeat the process with subject B." The result is a wall lined with portraits by Miki of his subjects and an opposite wall of portraits by his subjects of Miki. The pairs are arranged across from each other to facilitate comparison. Of the two series, the "my picture" row is far more intriguing.
Mikiko Hara: Blind Letter

4 - 13 June 2010
third district gallery
(Tokyo)
Hara uses the Iconta Six, a spring-loaded camera built between the 1930s and '50s whose mechanisms seem rather "loose" compared to the precision digital cameras of today. For photographers like Hara who snap scenes of everyday life, a major issue is how to achieve a subtle looseness of this sort, and it is to this end that she exploits the mechanics of old cameras. However she does it, the result is a magically lingering resonance in her work.
wks. X vision: Aya Kametani Lacquer Works

17 May - 5 June 2010
gallery wks.
(Osaka)
Strange implements and vessels festooned with animal furs, bird feathers, or deer antlers occupy an installation space that resembles a site for religious rites. The overall effect is one of exquisite tension. In each of Kametani's objects, the techniques, colors, and textures of lacquer and its application testify anew to the profundity and splendor of lacquer itself, a material that has occupied a place of prominence at ceremonial occasions since ancient times.

Masayo Nishio: Interior Views

10 - 13 June 2010
Yokohamabashi Art Picnic TOCO
(Kanagawa)
Nishio's paintings focus exclusively on the interior of her house. But instead of wide-angle views of entire rooms, she picks out sections of ceiling, pillars, stairs, or lamps viewed from below, and enlarges these partial images to create semi-abstract compositions. In her use of oils to recreate a traditional Japanese atmosphere, her work reminds one of Yuichi Takahashi's: both hint at the presence of guardian deities in small tatami rooms.

Kyoko Murase: Fluttering far away

10 April -13 June 2010
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
(Aichi)
The visitor passes under a black curtain, down a dark passage, then through another curtain before emerging into a gallery covered with pencil wall drawings: Murase's One-million-year Cave installation. These bird's-eye views of mountains and forests, or murals of young girls wandering through caverns, took the artist 15 days to draw, she says. As you stare at them, you begin to feel you are standing in the midst of a vast, silent stage set.
Pinhole Photographic Art Festival 2010 in Kyushu
1 - 20 June 2010
Kyosei no Sato - Kurokawa Inn Bijutsukan
(Fukuoka)
Founded in 2007 and directed by Kyoto University of Art and Design professor Yasu Suzuka, Japan's Pinhole Photographic Art Society (PPAS) held its annual festival of exhibits, workshops and seminars in Kyushu this past June. Next year's event is planned for Yokohama. By forging links with community-oriented programs around Japan, the society appears to be expanding its reach and growing in visibility year by year.
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