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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering commentary by a variety of reviewers about exhibitions at museums and galleries in recent weeks, with an emphasis on contemporary art by young artists. |
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| Shohaku Shock! Shohaku Soga and Kyoto Painters |
| 10 April - 20 May 2012 |
Chiba City Museum of Art
(Chiba) |
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| This show brings together paintings by Shohaku (1730-81) and famous contemporaries like Ito Jakuchu, Ikeno Taiga, and Maruyama Okyo, all of whom flourished in the old capital of Kyoto during the mid-Edo period. The screen paintings, 44 of which have been newly restored and are on loan from the Mie Prefectural Art Museum, confirm Shohaku's reputation as a full-blown eccentric, if not downright insane. His two-panel rendering of the equally iconoclastic Zen poets Hanshan and Shide (Kanzan and Jittoku) is a must-see. |
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| Keizo Kitajima: Isolated Places |
| 6 April - 13 May 2012 |
Rat Hole Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Kitajima (b. 1954) launched his "Places" series in the early nineties, using a large-format camera to capture buildings and other structures in cities throughout Asia and Europe. In these photos he attempted to strip each view of anything hinting at a distinctive local ambience, reducing it to a scene that could have been found anywhere in today's world. In his new series "Isolated Places," however, he admits not only vernacular elements of the local architecture but also signs with identifiable lettering, something he used to take pains to keep out of sight. It seems as if Kitajima has belatedly rediscovered the relaxed spontaneity of his early work. |
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| Haruka Saito Solo Exhibition |
| 6 - 26 April 2012 |
Tokyo Wonder Wall
(Tokyo) |
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| Saito fills her canvases with fine, colorful lines that evoke growing plants and flowing or rippling water. At the same time she leaves plenty of space, and this balance is one of the things that makes her compositions so delightful. The harmony seems impromptu, not the product of design -- but there is clearly a great deal of thought that goes into these works. One might guess that Saito engages in a lot of trial and error.
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| Chiharu Shiota: State of Being |
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Kenji Taki Gallery
(Tokyo)
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| A net of black yarn hangs from the ceiling like a spider's web; beneath it lies a mannequin-like sculpture of a woman's body made of black iron wire. Long strands of yarn dangle from the webbing to the floor, and several thin iron bars pierce the region of the heart of the female figure. Shiota's installation seems to be a visible rendering of a terrifying tale of -- what? Black rain, perhaps? |
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| Masabumi Nakagawa |
| 17 - 29 April 2012 |
gallery morning kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| Combining fresco, tempera, and acrylic on his canvases, Nakagawa paints dreamlike narratives fraught with symbolism. The colors are vivid and the mysterious figures that inhabit his world are lively, but something about his pigments and technique suffuses his work with a tranquil air that verges on the melancholy. Of the works in this show, Night Is Coming Now is particularly hypnotic. |
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| Kazuo Fukunaga: Behind the scenes of artist "M" |
| 14 April - 24 May 2012 |
B Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Since 1989 photographer Fukunaga has been shooting the self-portraits staged by Yasumasa Morimura, known for his impersonations of historical figures, actresses, and celebrated moments caught on camera. This show is not merely a valuable record of the creative processes of a prominent contemporary artist, for these "backstage" scenes, in which multiple events appear to be occurring at once, make for fascinating snapshots on their own terms. In other words, the series has its own artistic appeal independent of that of Morimura's work. |
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| Maki Okojima solo exhibition |
| 7 - 29 April 2012 |
island MEDIUM
(Tokyo) |
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| The subtitle of the show translates as: "The voices of beasts became the voices of spirits, Kanumun sent down rain, and people tilled the soil." Whatever the origins of this mythic narrative, it nicely articulates the sensibility of these paintings, which portray a primitive world in which human beings remain entirely immersed in Nature, spirits fill the forests, and there is no boundary between man and beast. Whether it was this vision that spurred Okojima to paint her lush, dense imagery, or whether it was painting that drew her into this world, the result is art in which form and content mesh perfectly. |
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| Seiji Shimoda: By Malted Brown Rice |
| 23 - 28 April 2012 |
Steps Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Shimoda is not only a performance artist but a poet and a painter. He also makes miso, the soybean paste fermented with a malted rice starter. This solo show included actual acrylic paintings on canvas, but also a framed, handwritten "Shock Assault Newspaper," as well as hand-drawn T-shirts and brown-rice koji starter made on site for sale. The whiff of a curious aroma from the acrylic paintings was not the viewer's imagination; Shimoda had mixed koji in with the paint. |
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| Keiko Nomura: Soul Blue |
| 23 - 29 April 2012 |
Place M
(Tokyo) |
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| As the title suggests, Nomura's latest series is dominated by the color blue, in lieu of the red of her previous outing, "Red Water." Unchanged, however, is the dramatic contrast between light and dark that she achieves, and her frequent use of women, naked or clothed, as her subjects. Looking at her series of cityscapes shot in fixed-point fashion from her Tokyo apartment, however, one can tell that she has slowed her earlier heart-pounding rhythm in favor of a more contemplative mood, as if she is now content to quietly observe the passage of time.
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| Emiko Aoki: In the End of Silence |
| 9 - 14 April 2012 |
Ai Gallery
(Aichi) |
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| Aoki's solo show consists of several large paintings, all of which are at least eighty percent red, with subtly nuanced ripples of blue and green percolating up from below. When you place paintings like these with a shared color scheme in an exhibit space that is stark white on all sides -- walls, ceilings, and floor -- the effect is stunning. A painting may not change according to where you put it, but how you view it certainly does. In that sense, every picture creates its own installation. |
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