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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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| Chisato Tanaka: Flash Back Night |
| 10 - 21 January 2012 |
Gallery GEN
(Tokyo) |
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| Tanaka paints rough renderings of people, cityscapes, boats, and planes against a flat black background that inevitably suggests a very dark night. The human figures here all appear isolated and lonesome, bundled up against the cold, and the boats and planes, too, pass through empty spaces devoid of signposts or guiding lights. The solitary fishing boat afloat in the middle of an otherwise jet-black circular canvas reminds one of the small vessels that occasionally flee into the open sea from North Korea. In the ten works shown here, Tanaka employs her simple game rules to poignant effect. |
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| Masamichi Tosa |
| 23 - 29 January 2012 |
Chojamachi Art Planet (CHAP)
(Kanagawa) |
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| Co-founder of the avant-art-music group Maywa Denki, Tosa allegedly painted all ten of these gouache works in a six-month period about ten years ago, under the tutelage of members of another contemporary art unit, The Group 1965. Before then, he claims, he had never so much as lifted a paintbrush. Mostly depicting monumental structures like the Great Seto Bridge, Tokyo Tower, Minato Mirai, Itsukushima Shrine, and Taro Okamoto's Tower of the Sun, Tosa's work, though not exactly masterful, is admirably scientific in its precision. |
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| MP1: Expanded Retina |
| 21 January - 5 February 2012 |
G/P gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| MP1 consists of critic Futoshi Hoshino and four photographers -- Masaru Eguchi, Ryo Fujimoto, Daisuke Yokota, and Kazuo Yoshida -- all born in the years 1982-84. The group made its formal debut last fall with the "Expanded Retina" exhibition at the Shin-Minatomura site of the Yokohama Triennale. MP1 now appears to be in full orbit, with several projects planned this year at Tokyo-area galleries as well as online.
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| Eriko Koga Exhibition |
| 20 January - 20 February 2012 |
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Emon Photo Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Photographer Koga shot her Asakusa Zenzai (roughly, "Asakusa Bravo") series over a period of six years, from 2003 to 2008. Her subjects were an elderly couple, Zen and Hana, whom she met on the streets of Asakusa. Since her first exhibition of the photos in 2004 she has held several solo shows featuring the same series. This latest commemorates the publication of a book by the same title. The images never fail to resonate, but one would also like to know what Koga has been photographing more recently. |
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| Shintaro Sato: Risen in the East |
| 13 January - 25 February 2012 |
Photo Gallery International
(Tokyo) |
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| The length of the prints (up to 3,139 x 311 mm) is overwhelming. These endlessly broad panoramas (of eastern Tokyo, where the towering Sky Tree is being built) could only be produced by stringing together images shot with a digital camera. And indeed they were: Sato says he has combined as many as 30 shots into each print. It's a departure for the photographer, who until now has used a 4 x 5 large-format camera to shoot under very specific conditions (e.g. twilight) and from unusual perspectives (e.g. building fire escapes). With this radically expanded frame one senses a liberation of expression. |
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| Nobuhiro Hanaoka: Scrupulous Extrusion |
| 17 - 29 January 2012 |
Gallery Keifu
(Kyoto) |
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| Extrusion or protrusion is indeed the prevailing motif of Hanaoka's multimedia objects. The show includes footage of the process by which a video camera stuck in a hole in a carpet is pushed out by a rod, and a wooden statue to whose base are attached box-like appendages from which tubes of hardened resin ooze out and dangle in midair. Mixed with sakura shrimp and other odd bits of material, the resin resembles the similarly extruded Japanese food staple tokoroten (gelidium jelly). Hanaoka does a brilliant job of employing solid and very formal sculptural techniques in the service of whimsy and mischief. |
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| Shohei Furukawa |
| 23 - 28 January 2012 |
O Gallery eyes
(Osaka) |
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| These oils depicting high-school classroom scenes overlaid with elements of fantasy or abstraction represent the artist's attempt to reconstruct memories that are constantly being overwritten by more recent experience, yet remain emotionally vivid even as the scenes themselves grow harder to recall. While differing stylistically from Furukawa's previous work, the paintings in this series continue his ongoing effort to tap into a private memory store and share the sense of longing, wistful expectation, and even joy that he finds there. |
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| Yusuke Hishida: border/McD |
| 18 January - 5 February 2012 |
Bloom Gallery
(Osaka) |
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| Hishida always impresses with the meticulous preparation and determination to bring his concepts to fruition that one senses in his work. These photos of McDonald's outlets around the world are no exception: he began shooting the series in 1993 (in Guam), but this Osaka show is their first public exposure. Focusing on the ultimate in borderless phenomena -- the fast-food chain -- might seem like an about-face for Hishida, who in the past has gravitated to battlefronts and demarcation zones (he won a prize for his series of portraits of North and South Koreans). But in fact, as he points out, the contrasting appearance of these burger joints only highlights the boundaries between cultures. |
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| Walk up | and down | form | being formed |
| 12 January - 12 February 2012 |
NADiff Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Though this is a group show by three artists -- Yoichi Sano, Taku Hisamura, and Mitsuhiro Yamagiwa -- a visitor could easily mistake it for a solo production by Sano, whose ten photographs dominate the gallery wall. Poking around a bit, however, one comes across works by the other two in unexpected places: a shop set up by Yamagiwa inside a mini-gallery under the spiral staircase; a video installation by Hisamura hidden away in a storage room in back. On the floor, a pile of what looks like litter turns out to be volcanic soil from Mt. Io, gathered and deposited by Hisamura.
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| Yukikazu Ito: The Invisible Scene |
| 4 - 15 January 2012 |
Ring Cube
(Tokyo) |
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| When opening a photo collection, this reviewer's approach has always been to look for a clear concept on the part of the photographer and a discerning sensibility in the images. It's frustratingly harder, however, to go beyond that and actually get to the "essence" of the photographer. Ito's show, a mystical exploration of the landscape around Lake Biwa, came close in this regard. The quote posted there by Toshiaki Maeda, editor of Nippon Camera magazine, proved inspiringly apt: this is a photographer who "makes some sort of preparation." |
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