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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.
3 September 2012
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KATAGAMI Style: Paper Stencils and Japonisme
28 August - 14 October 2012
Mie Prefectural Art Museum
(Mie)
Katagami are the paper stencils used in Yuzen and other traditional Japanese textile-dyeing arts. Despite the artisanal pride taken in the quality of katagami designs, the stencils were long treated as expendables, and were often sold overseas with no thought given to preserving them here in Japan. This traveling exhibition, which has already appeared at Tokyo's Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum and the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, examines the influence of katagami on Western artists and designers from the late 19th century on, and how this legacy is reflected in contemporary work.

Water and Land -- Niigata Art Festival 2012
14 July - 24 December 2012
Various sites in Niigata City
(Niigata)
Niigata's sprawling citywide Water and Land Art Festival was launched in 2009 under the directorship of arts impresario Fram Kitagawa. For this second effort Kitagawa has stepped aside and four co-directors -- Yuu Takehisa, Hisako Horikawa, Yoshihiko Tanji, and Tetsuo Sato -- are in charge. The centerpiece is a giant installation by Noriyuki Haraguchi, Yoshihide Otomo, and Norimizu Ameya on the Bandaijima pier, while works by Shizue Ukaji, Motoyuki Shitamichi, Tanotaiga and others are on display in a converted "marine products hall" nearby. Buses take visitors to more far-flung sites featuring works by Anne Graham, Ai Sasaki, Irina Zatulovskaya, Naoki Ishikawa, and Tatsu Nishino.
Gutai: The Spirit of an Era
4 July - 10 September 2012
The National Art Center, Tokyo
(Tokyo)
The Gutai Art Association was an avant-garde art collective based in the Kansai region around Osaka from 1954 to 1972. Thanks to a recent renewal of interest in postwar contemporary Japanese art, an old slight is finally being remedied with this, the first major Gutai retrospective ever to be held in Tokyo. The show covers the full span of Gutai's 18 active years, from the group's earliest installations and performances to later Art Informel-inspired paintings and works of "technology art" devised for the World Expo held in Osaka in 1970.
Osamu Kokufu: Anywhere from Here

28 July - 9 September 2012
Kyoto Art Center
(Kyoto)
Kokufu's solo show consists of only a few works, but they are inspiring -- provocative juxtapositions of green plants and motor vehicles, and a large windmill on the roof that generates electricity illuminating a lamp under which plants grow. As the title implies, these are works that hint at the myriad possibilities for the future of humanity's relationship with nature and technology. It is ultimately an optimistic statement that leaves the viewer in a state of hope and anticipation.
Shoji Otomo: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

6 July - 30 September 2012
Yayoi Museum of Art
(Tokyo)
This retrospective attempts to cover the protean output of Shoji Otomo (1936-73), a multimedia renaissance man best known for illustrations of monsters, robots, superheroes, and other figments of his fertile imagination that appeared in the manga weekly Shonen Magazine in the late sixties. Through his meticulous attention to graphic detail, he brought his wacky creatures to life and endeared them to schoolboys throughout Japan.
1floor 2012: TTYTT, -to tell you the truth,-

25 August - 17 September 2012
Kobe Art Village Center
(Hyogo)
Since 2008 Kobe Art Village has sponsored the annual "1floor" project, in which it invites young artists and curators to organize a show. This year features Yu Kanai, a ceramic artist who is also a member of the Contact Gonzo performance unit, and Mayo Koide, a member of the print-product unit AO who creates installations from silkscreens. The collaboration of these two performance-oriented artists promises a unique mix of exhibition and action.
Yoshitomo Nara: a bit like you and me . . .

14 July - 23 September 2012
Yokohama Museum of Art
(Kanagawa)
Now an artist with global cachet, Nara got his first big break with a solo show at the Yokohama Museum in 2001. Now, 11 years later, he adds bronze sculpture to his oeuvre with works like Wicked Looking, as well as new paintings and drawings. Though his pet motif continues to be wide-eyed, somewhat mischievous, somewhat melancholy little girls, he does seem to be broadening his painterly palette these days. In any event the exhibition itself is beautifully designed.

Art Osaka 2012

6 - 8 July 2012
Hotel Granvia Osaka
(Osaka)
Held annually since 2002, this art fair boasted the participation of some 50 galleries in its tenth incarnation this past July, with each gallery occupying a guest room on the 26th floor of a downtown Osaka hotel. Room 6016, which hosted Osaka's Gallery Hosokawa, was filled with a memorable installation by Yukiko Nishiyama, while Naoki Kataguchi's recent paintings made a powerful impression in room 6108, temporary domain of Kanazawa's Inform Gallery.
Naoki Honjo: diorama
5 June - 5 August 2012
Shadai Gallery
(Tokyo)
Photographer Honjo's trademark is his use of the tilt function on a 4 x 5 inch large-format camera to focus on just one part of an image, blurring the rest of it. This technique, which can be seen in his best-known series, small planet, achieves a truly diorama-like effect that one never tires of looking at. Whereas this earlier work utilized natural light and a bird's-eye view of the subject, his new series, Light House (2002, 2011), captures city streets at night under artificial light in a manner that makes them resemble meticulously constructed scale models of the real thing.
Fumiaki Aono
6 - 22 July 2012
Gallery Turnaround
(Miyagi)
Local artist Aono's show at Sendai's Gallery Turnaround showcases works that are bizarre fusions of unrelated objects -- a boat and a desk, for example -- that the artist has "restored" from states of disrepair or abandonment. This is no exercise in the recycling of trashed goods: the "restored" items are of no practical use whatsoever. Aono was making art of this sort long before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated his hometown. After the disaster, he simply began working with objects picked up amid the debris. What has changed is not his method, but the environment in which he works.
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