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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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| Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2012 |
| 28 April - 27 May 2012 |
Gyoko-dori Underground Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Held in the pedestrian passages beneath Tokyo's downtown Marunouchi district, this show featured 30 young artists selected from art school commencement exhibitions throughout the country. Koji Nakazono, Rina Mizuno, and Shinnosuke Yoshida display a solid grasp of the essence and strategies of painting, with Nakazono in particular wielding a powerful brush. Robust sensibilities that do not swing with the trends of the times are visible in installations like Ishu Han's video and model of two tanks with their guns fused together or Mari Katayama's artificial legs-centered environment, and in Takako Okumura's cloth transmogrifications of the tropes of Grecian sculpture. |
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| Takashi Sobajima: Omoi Omoi Omou |
| 8 - 29 May 2012 |
Dai-Ichi Life South Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Sobajima's solo show consisted of seven large paintings. Six portray human-like figures but could hardly be called figurative. The paint is layered thickly in large color planes, but the surface is not flat; brush marks are in clear evidence, as well as occasional exposures of red or gray undercoating that are jarringly effective. With paintings of this scale one can't help thinking that the canvas and paints alone cost an awful lot; however, the overall effect is not at all ponderous, but rather one of jaunty humor. |
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| Sayuki Inoue: A Living Creature |
| 3 May - 3 June 2012 |
nap gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| This solo show at nap gallery in the 3331 Arts Chiyoda complex is photographer Inoue's first in a commercial gallery, but her images and their overall presentation are those of a veteran. Taking a waterproof camera beneath the waves of the ocean, she captures close-ups of swirling foam and whitecaps. Describing the sea as "a life that moves with no will," she admits to ambivalent feelings of fear mixed with reverence, but the images are fresh and bracing. A series in progress, these photos offer a hint of further good things to come from Inoue. |
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| Mayuko Morita: "We're in the tropics" |
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Tachibana Gallery
(Osaka) |
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| This solo show centered around Morita's oil paintings, but with videos and even clothing associated with her images also on display, it became something of an installation. Alongside such motifs as a blond-haired boy or a young girl sprawled on a beach reading a book were works made up of bright, cheerful patches of color. Superficially "cute," there is nonetheless something quease-inducing about these paintings that makes Morita's work at once appealing and unsettling. |
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| Ohnishi Mitsugu: Exposed to the Coast |
| 8 - 20 May 2012 |
Totem Pole Photo Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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In this new photo series Ohnishi casts off the soft, embracing perspective in which he has wrapped his past subjects; to the fore, instead, comes a raw, intense scrutiny of life and its challenges. In the sharp monochrome prints of series like "Seaside: Irradiation of Landscapes," scenes shot along Tokyo's suburban seashore are bathed in harsh sunlight. Though there is a patchwork quality to the show, the images collectively evince an obdurate determination to leave traces of one's own existence on the world one sees. Ohnishi speaks of being profoundly affected by the disasters of March 2011; that rinkai, the word for "seaside," is a homonym for "nuclear criticality" hardly seems coincidental.
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| Keiko Sasaoka: True View of Kuma-yama |
| 8 - 20 May 2012 |
photographers' gallery / Kula Photo Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| The title of this photo exhibition, a joint offering by photographers' gallery and Kula Photo Gallery, is borrowed from that of an ancient scroll of scenes of the mountainous Kuma-yama region of Shikoku Island. Sasaoka shot her images of the area in 2008 -- relatively current, granted, but still four years old -- leaving the viewer to wonder whether this is a series that has reached completion or is still in progress. Extending the project over a longer span of time might add to its substance. |
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| Fujii Takeshi Exhibition |
| 15 - 20 May 2012 |
Gallery Suzuki
(Kyoto) |
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| Often painted on cardboard, Fujii's renderings of the walls of buildings and other structures bring to life conditions of rust, rot and disintegration, but they also emit a curious tranquility, inspiring contemplative musings on the relationship between time and matter. Their depth of composition and color suggests that these surfaces of placid decay have many tales to tell. This is Fujii's first solo show in some time; one hopes for more in the near future. |
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| Zokei Prize Exhibition |
| 14 May - 2 June 2012 |
Tokyo Zokei University Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| Every year, the art and design school Tokyo Zokei University presents the Zokei Prize to the best works at its Zokei-ten exhibition. This show brought together works by 19 selected prizewinners in painting/printing, sculpture, design and video. A highlight in the printmaking category was Yuko Ueda's lithographic close-ups of the napes of necks. With the top half of each image occupied by black hair, with a narrower band of flesh tone below, these works could be taken for monochromatic abstracts from a distance, were it not for such details as wisps of neck down. In the painting department, Yumika Adachi's works, somewhat disappointing at a recent Gobidai (Five Art Universities) show, came alive with color here. Hard to say if such bright tones are a generational thing, or a reflection of individual personalities. |
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Mitsumasa Kadota / Trope
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| 12 May - 2 June 2012 |
Satoshi Koyama Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Kadota slathers paint onto his canvases with a spatula; though utterly abstract, the chance combinations of adjacent colors sometimes hint at concrete images -- but the eye is always drawn back to the materials themselves. In his new paintings, the sporadic presence of languid S-curve strokes somehow reduces the overall chaos quotient. Oddly, this detracts from the stimulative power of the work, yet also renders it more abstract. |
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| Rikuji Makabe: "time after time" |
| 6 April - 31 May 2012 |
Base Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Makabe paints silhouettes of trees on surfaces subdivided both laterally and vertically into plank-like segments. These latest works, on canvas, are reminiscent of the vibrant murals he painted on houses along the back alleys of the island of Ogijima for the 2010 Setouchi International Art Festival, which garnered him much deserved attention. But the decorative quality of these works on canvas would in fact resonate better against wooden walls or fences. Perhaps aware of this, Makabe has included some works painted on narrow wooden planks; from a distance one is reminded of the "Wood Painting" series by Naoyoshi Hikosaka. |
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