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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 2011 |
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| CAFE in Mito 2011 |
| 30 July - 16 October 2011 |
Art Tower Mito
(Ibaraki) |
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| Ibaraki Prefecture was hard hit by the March 11 earthquake, and Art Tower Mito, a landmark in the prefecture's capital, suffered considerable damage. Forced to cancel ongoing and upcoming exhibitions, it closed for over four months for repairs; the "CAFE" show is the museum's first since the earthquake. With aftershocks still a concern, this exhibition features paintings, photographs and other two-dimensional works in lieu of riskier large-scale installations. The emphasis, say the curators, is on art that exudes joie de vivre -- essentially, Art Tower Mito's way of saying "We're back!" |
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| Issei Suda: Sparrow Island |
| 1 September - 29 October 2011 |
Photo Gallery International
(Tokyo) |
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| Undaunted by recent health problems, Suda (b.1940) if anything seems to be wielding his camera with renewed vigor these days. The theme of his latest show is a tiny island off the Boso Peninsula near his home. Relentlessly eroded by the sea, Sparrow Island threatens to shrink to a mere rock, and eventually to nothing. Suda's new series is an experiment in progress, pointing to a new direction and commitment in his career. |
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| Kota Kishi: The books with smells |
| 23 August - 30 September 2011 |
Kula Photo Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Kishi has exhibited his photographs at several Tokyo venues in recent years, notably his "Wounds, Appearances" show at the Photographers' Gallery and "Things" at the Kula. His motifs are the striking objects, buildings and people he encounters in Japan's most notorious flophouse districts: Tokyo's Sanya, Osaka's Nishinari, Yokohama's Kotobuki-cho. Until now he has chosen to work in the orthodox medium of monochrome prints, but his latest efforts reveal an artist engaged in a decisive attempt to transform his approach. |
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| Ultra Award 2011 Exhibition |
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art project room ARTZONE
(Kyoto) |
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| Kyoto University of Art and Design and its production studio, Ultra Factory, host a competition to "discover and nurture the next generation of world-class ultra-artists." Offered to graduates or current students of the university, the Ultra Award went to five winners this year: Shingo Oshima, Keisuke Jimba, Yu Takai, Yusuke Doi, and Wang Ting-Ying. The works on display in the October show were the product of some four months of open production in the studio. |
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| Sculpture Times #1: FROM NUDE |
| 1 - 6 September 2011 |
Ueno Royal Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| The nude is of course a fundamental motif in all forms of visual art, not only sculpture. But despite its title, this group show by 15 young instructors in the Sculpture Department at Tokyo University of the Arts turned out not to be the anticipated roomful of nudes. There were some nude figures, to be sure, but also plenty of other stuff: piles of lumber, rocks assembled in the shapes of houses, and landscapes carved in stone. |
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| Tsuyoshi Isoe = Gustavo Isoe: Exceptional Talent of Realism in Madrid |
| 12 July - 2 October 2011 |
Nerima Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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Known as Gustavo Isoe overseas, Tsuyoshi Isoe (1954-2007) was born in Osaka and studied painting at an art prep school in Japan, but then moved to Madrid, where he mastered the fine detail of Spanish realism. This first retrospective since his premature death at 53 sheds some light on why, at a time when modern art seemed have entered a blind alley, Isoe chose to devote himself to realism of the purest sort. It also highlights some of the contradictions and limitations of realistic painting.
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| Cozue Takagi: Suzu |
| 3 September - 1 October 2011 |
Taro Nasu
(Tokyo) |
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| Though still in her twenties, photographer Takagi has already conclusively demonstrated the breadth and depth of her talent. In 2010, shortly after receiving the coveted Kimura Ihei Award for her series "Mid" and "Ground," she spent 100 days in her birthplace of Suwa, Nagano Prefecture. The present exhibition features works from that period, and coincides with publication of a photo collection by the same title. In the intervening year, Takagi moved from Tokyo back to Nagano and now lives and works there. |
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| Takafumi Yagi: Strangler fig |
| 13 September - 8 October 2011 |
Megumi Ogita Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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Yagi creates the "raw material" for his sculptures by gluing dozens or hundreds of colored pencils together with resin and carving this "wood" into the shape of chandeliers, candleholders and the like. The patterns on the surface, of the lead colors interspersed with the subdued flesh tones of the outer pencil wood, are truly lovely. Given that colored pencils are themselves a tool for creating art, there is something radical, and a bit willfully perverse, about using them as a sculpted medium.
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| George Hashiguchi: Hof -- Memories of Berlin |
| 14 - 27 September 2011 |
Nikon Salon Ginza
(Tokyo) |
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| This is veteran photographer Hashiguchi's first show of new work in some time -- though in truth, the "Hof" series is not exactly new. Some of the photos were shot by Hashiguchi from 1990 to 1993, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he visited the former East Berlin and used 6 x 6 and 4 x 5 format cameras to shoot the inner gardens of apartment blocks in some of the city's oldest neighborhoods. The present show augments these earlier works with more recent images taken in 2009 and 2010. |
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| Naoki Ishikawa: 8848 |
| 9 September - 22 October 2011 |
SCAI THE BATHHOUSE
(Tokyo) |
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Peak-scaling photographer and all-around adventurer Ishikawa packed not one but two film cameras, a Makina 670 and a Mamiya 7 II, when he climbed Mt. Everest (8,848 meters high) in the spring of 2011 -- for the second time. The repeated appearance of that distinctive triangular summit gives a powerful directional thrust to the images in this series. Knowing that to climb above the 8,000-meter mark is the ultimate test of human mental and physical endurance -- and with two cameras, no less -- added a palpable tension to the air of the gallery.
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