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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 February 2011 |
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| Domani: The Art of Tomorrow 2010 |
| 11 December 2010 - 23 January 2011 |
The National Art Center, Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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| The 12th installment of this regular exhibition of artists who received overseas study stipends from Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, this year's Domani highlights 12 such artists. Standouts include Kozo Miyoshi's uniquely configured photographs, the fresh colors and bold brushwork of painters Kanae Toyama and Mamika Nagare, and Soichiro Fukai's humorous, quasi-sculptural ceramics. Sadly, the vast halls and high ceilings of the National Art Center (exacerbated by a dearth of visitors) dominate the show with a cold, white vibe. Without any clear connection among the various artists' works, the aggregate effect is less of synergy than of a mutual canceling-out. |
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| Furansowa (Francois) Fujii |
| 10 - 22 January 2011 |
O Gallery eyes
(Osaka) |
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| Flawlessly mimicking the traditional styles of Yamato-e or the Rinpa school, Fujii mischievously sprinkles his lovely works with evidence of a twisted, sometimes dark sense of humor. This show presents his Aigan (Pet) series, depicting sparrows and sea cucumbers alike with large bells hung around their necks, and his Tsukumogami (Artifact Spirits) series, in which hand drums, tea utensils, and small animals frolic together. Fujii's seductive juxtapositions of the elegant and the sinister can become an addictive pleasure. |
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| Toshiaki Yamaoka: Gutic Study |
| 11 - 23 January 2011 |
Gallery PARC
(Kyoto) |
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| Yamaoka's perennial motif is the "gutic" -- a monstrous black lump or blob that inserts itself into otherwise quotidian reality. Here the gutic protrudes from the wall like a gargantuan shadow that threatens to overwhelm the gallery. Though an optical illusion of sorts, this enigmatic presence apprises us less of the unreliability of our sense of sight than of the clever strategies our brains employ in their attempt to make sense of the world around us. |
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| Akira Yamaguchi: Tokyo Traveler |
| 28 December 2010 - 10 January 2011 |
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Ginza Mitsukoshi 8th Floor Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Yamaguchi's solo show of mostly new works on the subject of Tokyo runs the gamut from photography to sculpture, a dramatic departure from his established image as a painter with peerless traditional-style technique. The sublime highlight of the show, and a sign of the new trails he is blazing for himself, is Roden, a lifesize model of a tiny streetcar just big enough to hold three passengers and ply the back alleys of Tokyo's old-town Yanesen district. Absurd at first glance, over time it comes to look like a perfectly sensible invention. |
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Yakiniku -- Artist Action in Edagawa
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26 - 29 December 2010
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Edagawa Korean School
(Tokyo) |
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| Members of the Artist Action group exhibited works for four days in the Edagawa Korean School building in Koto-ku, Tokyo, just before it was slated for demolition to make way for a new building. Many of the pieces were participatory, such as Raita Ishikawa's arrangement of "redboards" to interact with blackboards, and Taisuke Morishita's question-and-answer format installation. Mixed in were paintings and human figures created by the schoolkids, making for a veritable bibimbap stew of art. |
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| Yuki Kimura: Untitled |
| 5 September 2010 - 11 January 2011 |
Izu Photo Museum
(Shizuoka) |
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| Yuki Kimura creates her works from assemblages of photographs. Some she took herself, but the majority are snapshots she found in family photo albums, or at flea markets during her travels, or that were sent to her by friends. Kimura takes these images and expands, rearranges and juxtaposes them with one another or with other objects, producing installations whose origins are a combination of self and other. |
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| Oil Shock! Oil Painters Born in the 90s |
| 23 - 28 December 2010 |
Hidari Zingaro
(Tokyo) |
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| One of several shows in the four-week-long 0000 Fest produced by 0000 (pronounced oh-four), a group of four fashionable young art organizers based in Kyoto, this one features five female oil painters who are still in their late teens. What astonishes is not their skill with oils, but rather their utter lack of, or perhaps lack of interest in, such skills as they dauntlessly employ the medium to paint images that seem inspired primarily by girls' manga. |
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| Kyoko Nakamura: Analogue Dubbing |
| 3 - 26 December 2010 |
eN arts
(Kyoto) |
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| In this solo exhibit of past and present works, Nakamura's drawings, including several large pieces, fill the walls yet still seem dwarfed by the roomy gallery space. Series like "Girls' Talk", a row of Barbie-doll-like figures spouting trivial chat, and her prodigious output of drawings that combine pictures with brief phrases ala karuta cards, continue Nakamura's application of a quirky humor to images and memory. This time, however, the eye is drawn more to the coloring and fine linework of her art than to the play of words and images. |
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| Rinjiro Hasegawa |
| 23 October - 23 December 2010 |
The Miyagi Museum of Art
(Miyagi) |
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| An iconoclastic realist painter who was also a writer of mysteries, Hasegawa (1904-1988) was known for his standoffish attitude toward Japan's art establishment. External light reflects the shadow of a window, or of the artist himself, onto the surfaces of the cups and bowls in his late-period still lifes. These are not mere objects, but mirrors to the outside world, and the surrealist sensibility of Hasegawa's compositions recalls the sand-dune photography of Shoji Ueda. |
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| Neo New Wave Part 2 |
| 3 - 26 December 2010 |
island ATRIUM
(Chiba) |
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| This second half of a two-part exhibition (the first was last September) brought together six multimedia artists (Showhey Kato, Tsubasa Kato, Takuro Kotaka, COBRA, Masayuki Harada, and Ayumi Hisatsune) who make liberal use of video monitors and are prone to busy, space-filling installations. Whereas Part 1's artists seemed to use their own senses as a launching point, this installment's contributors appear to share a desire to draw viewers into the vortex of their activities. |
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