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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 April 2011
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Shiro Kuramata and Ettore Sottsass
2 February - 8 May 2011
21_21 DESIGN SIGHT
(Tokyo)
Japanese designer Kuramata (1934-91) and Italian designer Sottsass (1917-2007) became close friends in 1981 when Kuramata joined Sottsass's Memphis project, a collective that shocked the world with its postmodern approach to design. This show is mainly about demonstrating the pioneering role of Kuramata's work, as where the legs of his table Twilight Time (1985) anticipate the tubes of Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque [which remains intact despite heavy interior damage from the March 11 earthquake -- ed.].

Sohei Nishino: Wandering the Diorama Map
15 February - 2 April 2011
Emon Photo Gallery
(Tokyo)
Nishino, who won Canon's New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award in 2005, has made a career of his ongoing Diorama Map project, in which he shoots a selected city from numerous angles, then reconstructs it as a giant photo collage. Lately he has been scanning his images and printing them out on huge sheets. Starting with Japanese cities like Osaka and Tokyo and extending his scope to New York, Paris, London, Istanbul, Hong Kong and other metropolises worldwide, Nishino has created ten such Diorama Maps so far.
Maiko Haruki: "photographs, whatever they are"
26 February - 8 May 2011
1223 Gendaikaiga
(Tokyo)
Haruki's images, nearly monochromatic and offering only fleeting glimpses of human figures or scenery, reveal an exquisite sensibility. Another great photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, has also used the American Museum of Natural History as a thematic backdrop, but Haruki's series does not focus on the objects on display there. Rather, she seems interested in the museum as space, reconstructing a unique environment from tiny windows on the exhibits randomly scattered across a black field. The cumulative product of these images is a new dimension where space and time intersect.
MOT Annual 2011: Nearest Faraway

26 February - 8 May 2011
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
(Tokyo)
MOT has been holding this annual group show of new Japanese art since 1999. This, its 11th installment, has the subtitle "Measuring the depth of the world." The six featured artists (Akiko Ikeuchi, Chihiro Kabata, Junko Kido, Naoko Sekine, Motohiro Tomii, and Lyota Yagi) reexamine such preconceived notions as looking, listening, space and time from their own idiosyncratic vantage points, seeking clues in the everyday world. In these six distinct settings, visitors may find opportunities to view the quotidian with fresh eyes.
In Pursuit of a Dream: The Collection Today

19 March - 22 May 2011
Suntory Museum of Art
(Tokyo)
Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the museum, this exhibition showcases masterpieces of painting, lacquerware, ceramics and glass from its collection and introduces 20 new acquisitions. Notable among the latter are sumi ink paintings by Sesshu, Kano Motonobu, Kano Eitoku, and Kano Sanraku, and sketches by Ito Jakuchu and Maruyama Okyo.
500 Arhats: Buddhist Paintings by Kano Kazunobu

15 March - 29 May 2011
Edo-Tokyo Museum
(Tokyo)
Late Edo-era artist Kano Kazunobu (1816-63) took ten years to produce 100 scroll paintings depicting the 500 Arhats (enlightened disciples of the Buddha), all of which are in the possession of the Zojoji temple in central Tokyo, which protected them through the anti-Buddhist vendettas of the Meiji Restoration and the fire bombings of World War II. This is the first time that all 100 scrolls in the series have been exhibited outside the temple. [Opening of the exhibition has been postponed to late April pending repairs of earthquake damage to the Edo-Tokyo Museum -- ed.]
Masako Shirasu: Prayers to Nature, Leading to Shintoism and Buddhism

19 March - 8 May 2011
Setagaya Art Museum
(Tokyo)
Essayist and art collector Shirasu (1910-98) was especially fond of ancient works depicting Buddhist and Shinto deities. Commemorating the centenary of her birth, this exhibition brings together some of her favorite art objects, including those in the possession of temples and shrines she visited in her travels and described in her voluminous written oeuvre, excerpts of which are posted alongside the works on display. The 120 items include National Treasures, Cultural Properties, and Buddhist and Shinto statuary never exhibited in public before.

Sharaku

1 May - 12 June 2011
Tokyo National Museum
(Tokyo)
Toshusai Sharaku was an ukiyo-e artist wrapped in an enigma. He burst on the Edo art scene in May 1794 with his series of 28 gorgeous mica-ground prints of Kabuki actors. The following January he vanished just as suddenly, leaving behind some 140 woodblock prints and nothing else. To this day his true name and dates of birth and death remain unknown. In 1910 German ukiyo-e scholar Julius Kurth introduced Western aficionados to the artist with his book Sharaku. A hundred years after its publication, this show brings together Sharaku prints from all over the world, providing an excellent overview of his work and reaffirming for contemporary viewers that, whoever he was, Sharaku was a master of scintillating originality and style.

Social Dive: Exploratory Imagination

18 March - 11 April 2011
3331 Arts Chiyoda
(Tokyo)
The recent explosion of art projects in Japan and elsewhere has inspired a fresh look at possibilities for art in societies in a slump. This show at the vibrant new Tokyo art facility 3331 Arts Chiyoda showcases 11 installations by a new generation of artists who throw their bodies and minds at society with great gusto. They range from artists who engage in an idiosyncratic "editing" of objects and environments immediately at hand to those who take part in joint projects with communities or government entities in non-Western locales like Africa, India and Brazil.
Kyoji Takubo: The Art of Landscape
26 February - 8 May 2011
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
(Tokyo)
Known for his long-term restoration projects in Normandy, France (Chapel of the Apple Trees) and Shikoku, Japan (Konpirasan), veteran artist Takubo (b.1949) has not been visible on the Tokyo art scene for many years. For this, his first full-scale retrospective in the city, he has produced a "Tokyo version" of each of his two recent projects, creating yet another restoration installation that incorporates a review of his earlier work in addition to his current efforts.
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