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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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| Michiko Kon |
| 10 - 22 January 2011 |
gallery kobo
(Tokyo) |
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| Veteran photographic artist Kon is known for her images of bizarre objects constructed of plants, animals and food -- "Lotus and Dress," "Sardines and Parasol," "Gizzard Shad and Zebra" and so on. This show offers much work in the same vein, but also intimations of a different approach. In "Decaying Balcony and Photo" or "Silver Disinfectant Case and Photo," she seems to be revisiting her own memories with a fresh eye. The show whets one's appetite for more of what promises to be an intriguing new direction for Kon. |
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| Tatsuo Ikeda: The Trajectory of Postwar Avant-Garde Art |
| 9 October 2010 - 10 January 2011 |
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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| Over his sixty-year career, Ikeda has shifted chameleon-like from one medium to another: self-portraits in the forties, surrealism and social-commentary "reportage art" in the fifties, the "oval space" series of the sixties, performances like "Brahma's Tower" in the seventies, the "Brahman" series of the eighties, and the "Universal Gravitation" series of the nineties, culminating in his "Phase of Place" series in the 2000's. Like a true avant-gardist, Ikeda often dabbled in objets and performance art, yet amazingly -- for someone of his era -- he never stopped painting. That in itself is an impressive accomplishment. |
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| Yoshinori Marui: Collecting Light |
| 11 January - 26 February 2011 |
Photo Gallery International
(Tokyo) |
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| His new series "Collecting Light" represents a conscious departure by Marui from his past photographic work. While he was traveling in Okinawa in the midst of producing his 2008 series "Along the Coastline - from Cape Kyan to Mabuni, Okinawa," a flash of light suddenly struck his focusing screen, he says. Perceiving this as "unnameable, primordial light," Marui has since devoted himself to capturing light itself. In tandem with this show he is releasing a privately published collection, Yoshinori Marui 2000-2010. |
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| Manabu Ikeda: Focus |
| 8 December 2010 - 15 January 2011 |
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Mizuma Art Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Until now, Ikeda has usually exhibited his wondrously meticulous pen-and-ink drawings in a large format. This time he presents 20 smaller works, all in the same 22 x 27 cm size. If the hi-res detail of every inch of his bigger compositions was part of the thrill, then perhaps the thrill factor here is divided by 20, but the fun is multiplied to the same degree. Ikeda thrives on composites of juxtaposed opposites: macro and micro, nature and artifice, life and death. In his world, every flake in a scene of softly falling snow turns out to be a tiny skull; the crest of a towering ocean wave becomes a precipitous mountain range; and a huge snake devours a similarly sinuous train. |
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Shoji Ueda: Photography and Me
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18 December 2010 - 23 January 2011
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The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama
(Saitama) |
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| In the decade since famed photographer Shoji Ueda (1913-2000) passed away he has been the subject of numerous retrospectives. This one is a five-city show that opened in Kyoto and recently visited the Tokyo area. This reviewer wondered how the curators would manage to come up with a fresh way to frame Ueda's well-known images, but by adhering to an orthodox format they did the right thing. At once surreal and Chaplinesque, Ueda's whimsical work, much of it shot on the sand dunes of his native Tottori, benefits from a no-frills presentation. |
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| Tomoaki Makino: Daydream |
| 12 January - 2 February 2011 |
B Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| In Makino's debut photo collection, Tokyo Soap Opera (2005), he had middle-aged women of his mother's generation adopt deliberately exaggerated poses in their home environment. The woebegone self-consciousness of his subjects and the rather satirical edge to the spectacle made the series a hit. With Daydream Makino has simply shifted the setting to New York, where he shot these portraits in 2008. This show took place concurrently with the publication of an elegantly designed companion book by the same title. |
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| Ayato Fujiwara: The Heart Is Not Here |
| 8 January - 7 February 2011 |
3331 Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Fujiwara creates scale-model ceramic human beings. Some are full-length, others are busts placed on the floor or reliefs hanging on the wall. A visitor is confronted with several dozen of these ten-centimeter people of all ages, ethnicities, and (it appears) levels of socioeconomic status, each with its own distinct individuality. Could this prodigious output stem from a desire to take the frail human form, destined to decay in less than a century, and immortalize it in fired clay, which can last for thousands of years? Or are these little statues a souvenir of the human race for any alien visitors to the planet a million years hence? |
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| Sakura Fukushima: "from yesterday" |
| 15 January - 6 February 2011 |
Bambinart Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Fukushima's paintings feature houses, flowers and toys scattered in somewhat forlorn fashion across cotton cloth backing. Closer inspection, however, reveals that while her backgrounds of sky and ground are indeed painted, the houses, flowers and so on in the foreground are actually embroidered on with threads of various colors. Fukushima's novel approach got this reviewer to thinking about the similarity between the Japanese verbs for
paint (nuru) and stitch (nuu). |
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| hello it's me: mississippi exhibition |
| 18 - 28 January 2011 |
Gallery H2O
(Kyoto) |
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| The artist who calls himself mississippi is perhaps best known as a cartoonist who launched the comic magazine KYOCO with several other artists in 2009. With his past work appearing in small printed magazines or group shows, this solo exhibition was a rare (perhaps first) opportunity to see his large paintings. Between this show and his December 2010 presentation of drawings in Tokyo, mississippi is finally achieving some well-deserved visibility for his charming artistic vision. |
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| Tomonori Arakawa |
| 13 January - 13 February 2011 |
Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya
(Tokyo) |
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| This reviewer went to see the Tomonori Arakawa show presented by Chaos*Lounge at Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya. The logo for some reason reminded me of Metallica. The event had an extremely otakuesque vibe that immediately evoked otaku shops and maid cafes in Akihabara. Meanwhile, the show itself seemed to revolve around the question, just who is Tomonori Arakawa? Evidently an alias for a kind of collective intelligence, the phenomenon is perfect for provoking discourses and critiques of the Internet Age. |
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