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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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1 February 2013 |
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| Mitsunori Sakano: VISIBLE BREATH |
| 14 October - 4 November 2012 |
3331 Arts Chiyoda
(Tokyo) |
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| Projected simultaneously onto five screens, filmmaker Sakano's latest work is based on four years of research he did on his hometown of Tsurugi, in what is now the city of Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture. The images tell concurrent stories woven from the folkways, festivals, natural environment, culture and history of the area. There are plenty of artworks and projects that delve into the history of a place, but attempts like this to plumb the depths of prehistory and myth are rare. |
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| Mixed Bathing World 2012: Beppu Contemporary Art Festival |
| 6 October - 2 December 2012 |
Beppu City, various venues
(Oita) |
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| This was the second edition of an international art triennale held in Beppu, a city in Kyushu renowned for its hot springs. As the "mixed bathing" (konyoku) title suggests, the event is a friendly mix of art, dance, music, and performance, but its true novelty rests in its collaborations between contemporary artists and popular entertainers. In this respect it markedly deviates from the conventions of the contemporary art world and has a quirky charm not found in typical events of the genre. |
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| Asako Narahashi: in the plural |
20 November - 22 December 2012
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ZEIT-FOTO SALON
(Tokyo) |
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| Narahashi may be best known for half awake and half asleep in the water, her series of seashore images shot while half-submerged with a waterproof camera. Though that series won her international acclaim and may indeed represent the "high-water mark" of her career so far, this recent exhibition indicates that she is already taking steps in a new direction. |
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| Japanese Photographers in America 1910-1930 |
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JCLL Photo Salon
(Tokyo)
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| Ichiro Hori (1879-1969) and Harry Torazi Mayeda (1875-1935) were Japanese photographers who lived and worked in the United States. Hori emigrated there in 1901 and opened a portrait studio in New York in 1912, but he also shot experimental, soft-focus photos of dancers. Mayeda, too, moved to the U.S. in 1901. While working as a real estate manager in Los Angeles, he entered his works, primarily landscapes, in art photography salons not only in the U.S. but Canada, Spain, Belgium, and France, winning several prizes. |
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| Her Name Is Abstra |
| 11 November - 16 December 2012 |
Daido Warehouse
(Kyoto) |
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| At this converted-warehouse venue in downtown Kyoto, twelve artists produced their own group show: Ei Arakawa, Teppei Kaneuji, Kaoru Kan, Takashi Kunitani, Meiro Koizumi, Hiroshi Tachibana, Kazuhito Tanaka, Hidekazu Tanaka, Tomonari Nakayashiki, Shimon Minamikawa, Saori Miyake, and Lyota Yagi. All exhibited new works addressing the theme "What are the new abstract expressions of today?" |
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| Another Side of Kiyo'o Kawamura |
| 20 October - 16 December 2012 |
Meguro Museum of Art
(Tokyo) |
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| Kawamura (1852-1934) was a Western-style painter active during the Meiji and Taisho eras. Featuring works from the Bato Hiroshige Museum's Aoki Collection and the Meguro Museum's own Kashima Collection, this retrospective focused on the artist's later career. Torakichi Kashima, owner of the Shiseido publishing house, was a patron of Kawamura, whose book and magazine cover designs for Shiseido were also on display. |
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| The Spirit of Kuniyoshi |
| 3 November 2012 - 14 January 2013 |
Yokohama Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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Though centered around the celebrated late-Edo period ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), the exhibition actually devoted more of its wall space to his disciples and their successors. An illustrious lineage, it includes such notables as Meiji-era ukiyo-e practitioners Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Kawanabe Kyosai, Taisho-era portraitist Kaburaki Kiyokata, and Western-style painters of the Goseta school. The show concluded with woodblock prints by early-Showa painters like Shinsui Ito and Hasui Kawase, as well as Paul Jacoulet (1902-60), a French-born woodblock artist who spent most of his career in Japan.
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New Phases in Contemporary Painting
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| 27 October - 24 December 2012 |
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
(Hyogo) |
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This ambitious show sought to examine the current state of painting in Japan through the works of 14 artists, ranging from established to up-and-coming: Takashi Ishida, Junko Ishiro, Nobuyuki Osaki, Yoshitomo Nara, Hiroyuki Nisogi, Kazuhiro Nomura, Toshiaki Hicosaka, Isao Hiramachi, Nobuya Hoki, Naofumi Maruyama, Saori Miyake, Kentaro Yokouchi, Mayuko Wada, and Satoshi Watanabe. In their materials and techniques, many of these works straddle the line between painting and other genres.
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| Soluble Fish |
| 10 - 26 January 2013 |
Gallery Fleur, Kyoto Seika University
(Kyoto) |
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Twelve young Kyoto-area artists collaborated on this exhibition, named after the Surrealist Andre Breton's 1924 novel of the same title. The show's subtitle, tsuzuki no genjitsu, could be translated as "beyond reality" or "continuation of reality," suggests that the artists represented here view their work as an extension of the Surrealist tradition. Featured were Yasunori Kinukawa, Tomohiro Takagi, Yukari Araki, Nobuhiro Hanaoka, Yuki Hayashi, and others.
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| Gentaro Ishizuka: Glacier Diary Glacier Bay |
6 - 28 December 2012
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SLOPE GALLERY
(Tokyo) |
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| Concurrent with the publication of Ishizuka's photo book by the same title, this show introduced a series of photographs taken in July and August 2010, which he spent circumnavigating Alaska's Glacier Bay in a kayak. The core of the series consists of 16 vertical snapshots captured on 35 mm color film, augmented by three large prints of glaciers shot with a large-format camera. |
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