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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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1 November 2010 |
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| Mitsugu Ohnishi: Standard Streetscape |
| 1 - 14 September 2010 |
Ginza Nikon Salon
(Tokyo) |
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| As the title suggests, these 58 prints, all enlarged to A3 size, do indeed represent a kind of photographers' standard in street-scene snapshots. Submitting oneself to the vagaries of chance, skillfully framing simultaneously occurring events on the street, creating the appropriate compositional balance -- Ohnishi's mastery of all these elements of the process show him to be the owner of a cool hand and eye, a true artisan.
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| Fareeza Terunuma: Food Appetite, Sex Appetite |
| 6 - 18 September 2010 |
Vanilla Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Terunuma has worked as an AV actress/director and musician; here she exhibits photographs that pursue the title concept graphically and relentlessly, with an impact and power that draw in even the most jaded viewer. Some seventy framed images, large and small, are scattered across the studio walls; more than half feature the artist herself (generally unclothed) as the model. |
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| Masako Nakahira: Stars on the ground |
| 14 - 26 September 2010 |
neutron kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| A row of paintings, all monotonal aerial views of cities at night, each canvas covered by a scatter of lights from homes, apartment houses, railways . . . At first glance, the images appear too casually conceived, the scenery too plain and uninspired. But closer examination -- with the metaphorical title of the show in mind -- reveals sensitive powers of observation and a meticulous touch on the part of the artist. Our imaginations roam free over these cityscapes, inspired after all. |
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| Akihide Tamura: AFTERNOON |
| 3 September - 30 October 2010 |
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gallery bauhaus
(Tokyo) |
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| Based on Tamura's collection of the same title published last year, this viewing of 35 of the legendary photographer's prints includes many of the 6x6 monochrome works that appeared on the inside cover of Bijutsu Techo, Japan's premier art magazine, in the early 1970s. Tamura's fragmentary images betray no national identity; concerned purely with light and shadow, he draws a sharp line between himself and the documentary-photo or Japanese-sentiment-imbued conventions of his contemporaries. Indeed, his work established a template for generations of Japanese photographers to come. |
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| Forward R70 Exhibition |
13 September - 2 October 2010
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Gallery-58
(Tokyo) |
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| Genpei Akasegawa, Yutokutaishi Akiyama, Tatsuo Ikeda, Shintaro Tanaka, Hiroshi Nakamura, Tatsumi Yoshino: all six artists in this show are over seventy, and all are exhibiting new works. Though perhaps no longer at the very forefront of anything, all six demonstrate that they have not lost their avant-garde edginess -- half in earnest, half in jest -- over the course of careers spanning half a century. |
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| Tomoko Esashi: Figure |
| 21 September - 2 October 2010 |
Gallery Natsuka
(Tokyo) |
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| Close scrutiny of Esashi's terracotta objects discloses that they are made up of countless tiny human figures. The realization that the artist baked all these wee people together in a kiln is somewhat unnerving. |
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| Matsuura Hiroyuki Solo Exhibition: Super Acrylic Skin - Sweet Addiction |
| 1 - 25 September 2010 |
Tokyo Gallery + Beijing Tokyo Art Projects
(Tokyo) |
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"Super acrylic skin" is an apt description of the flat, smooth surfaces of Matsuura's animation-like characters. By committing their texture-less textures -- normally reproduced only in print media or on display screens -- to canvas by hand (if indeed he does them by hand), Matsuura somehow transforms these cartoony images into works of art that embody what every true work of art embraces deep down: a sense of self-contradiction.
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| Junya Ishigami: How small? How vast? How architecture grows |
| 24 August - 17 October 2010 |
Shiseido Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| These sixty architectural plans, which seem to be little more than image training exercises, consist mainly of sketchlike maquettes and memos. Wunderkind Ishigami delights in dreaming up fantastic projects that would never occur to most architects, and probably shouldn't. Examples here include "Level Bridge," a flat, ring-like span that can extend around the world without a single support, and "Environment in the Sea," which converts a piece of the ocean floor to dry land by erecting a high wall to keep the water out. |
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| Genealogy of the Figurine: From Dogu to Kaiyodo |
| 10 July - 26 September 2010 |
Kyoto International Manga Museum
(Kyoto) |
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| Though half of the show is devoted to the history and products of Kaiyodo, the company most closely associated with today's figurine "culture," the other half traces the origins of the figurine boom back to the clay dogu of ancient Japan. Classics of Japanese doll culture past and present, ranging from kokeshi to Licca fashion dolls, are represented among the 125 pieces borrowed from the Irie Collection of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History. |
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| RongRong & inri |
| 25 September - 22 October 2010 |
MEM
(Tokyo) |
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This Beijing-based husband-and-wife team have been collaborating since Yokohama-born inri moved to China in 2000 and met RongRong, who has been doing performance art since the nineties. Since marrying in 2001 their photographic work has included portraits of inri while pregnant, their three children, and the two of them from the rear, with their matching long hair braided together -- intimate images that evoke serenity, confidence and trust.
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