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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 June 2013
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Yuki Katsura: A Fable
6 April - 9 June 2013
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
(Tokyo)
From her early sketches as a student in the mid-1920s through her final work in the early 1990s, the six-decade career of Yuki Katsura (1913-91) spanned the entire Showa era of prewar and postwar Japan. A pioneer among Japanese female artists of that period, Katsura expressed herself with equal passion through finely-detailed oil paintings, collages, and caricatures. This retrospective celebrating the centennial of her birth amply represents all these elements of her oeuvre.

Chim Pom: Pavilion
30 March - 28 July 2013
Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum
(Tokyo)
Two years ago, this group of guerrilla-art provocateurs made waves when they appended a scene of the smoking ruins of Fukushima Nuclear Plant No. 1 to Myth of Tomorrow, the atomic holocaust-themed mural by Taro Okamoto (1911-96) that adorns a wall in Tokyo's busy Shibuya Station. To the credit of the executors of Taro's estate, they did not write this incident off as mere vandalism, but opened a dialogue with the artists, culminating in this show, billed as a "confrontation/collaboration" between Chim Pom and Taro. The titular pavilion is a room in the museum (Taro's former residence and atelier) that has been converted into a mausoleum displaying a small chunk of Taro's actual bone.
Kayo Ume: Umekayo
13 April - 23 June 2013
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
(Tokyo)
Currently on a roll, up-and-coming photographer Ume (b. 1981) makes the most of the vast gallery spaces at Tokyo Opera City in this, her first major exhibition. Framing her prints or blowing them up to gargantuan size only enhances the power already inherent in the images. The overwhelming effect of the display owes something to the talents of the show's art director, graphic designer Shin Sobue, but above all it testifies to Ume's charismatic ability to draw the viewer into her world.
All You Need Is Love: From Chagall to Kusama and Hatsune Miku

26 April - 1 September 2013
Mori Art Museum
(Tokyo)
The Mori celebrates its tenth anniversary with a heavily promoted show on a can't-miss theme: Love. With some 200 items that range from historic masterpieces to "ambitious new works," the show purports to depict love in "its many manifestations." Besides Chagall, Kusama, and the curious choice of Hatsune Miku, a virtual-reality character that exists only in cyberspace, featured artists include such luminaries as Kahlo, Hockney, Dali, Magritte, Koons, Hirst, Taro Okamoto, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Yoko Ono, and Chim Pom.
The Secret Lake: Yozo Hamaguchi, Akiko Ikeuchi, Naoyo Fukuda, Saori Miyake

18 May - 11 August 2013
Musée Hamaguchi Yozo: Yamasa Collection
(Tokyo)
Poet Mutsuo Takahashi curates this summer exhibition featuring copper-plate prints by Hamaguchi (1909-2000) alongside recent works by three artists, all born in the late 1960s or early 1970s, who share his sensitive, meticulous sensibility. Akiko Ikeuchi uses fine silk thread to fill space with an expansive, delicately emotive atmosphere; Naoyo Fukuda works with words, books and stationery as her materials of expression; and Saori Miyake creates photograms of transparent landscapes that only superficially resemble reality.
Motoju Miyosawa: Kataezome Stencil Dyeing

24 January - 2 April 2013
Kobe Fashion Museum
(Hyogo)
Miyosawa (1909-2002) learned the art of kataezome stencil dyeing from the master Keisuke Serizawa, and was active in the Mingei folk-art movement launched by Soetsu Yanagi, founding the Nagano Mingei Association in his hometown of Matsumoto. This first comprehensive retrospective in the Kansai region of Miyosawa's work featured his designs on everything from folding screens and panels to kimono and obi fabrics, as well as a selection of dyed textiles Miyosawa collected on his frequent excursions overseas.
Matter and Sculpture: from Aporia toward Memento

2 - 6 April 2013
The University Art Museum, Chinretsukan Gallery
(Tokyo)
This was the eighth exhibition curated by the Sculpture Department at Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) since 1997. One was first struck by the odor wafting from the innermost room, where Noriyuki Haraguchi had installed an oil pool, its surface stunningly flat and devoid of a single ripple. Such was its power that the entire exhibition seemed to be built around this one work.

Tokyo Story 2013 Part 1: Now, Here

29 March - 29 April 2013
Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo
(Tokyo)
Works displayed in this group show by Kento Nito, Ishu Han, and OLTA -- three Japan-based artists who participated in Tokyo Wonder Site's 2012 Creator-in-Residence program -- shared an aspiration to be "contemporary" and "raw." With elements of the wacky and grotesque that recalled Duchamp and Hirst, OLTA's installation Digestion of the Earth in particular exuded an appealingly primitive dynamism.
Masaki Hirano: MONEY - Value of silence
4 - 16 April 2013
Promo-Arte Latin American Art Gallery
(Tokyo)
Beginning with After the Festival, his collection of images shot in 1991-93 in post-communist Russia, East Berlin, and Cambodia, photographer Hirano has continued to release new installments in his ongoing project, "Down the Road of Life." His current series, MONEY, is a bit of a departure, featuring curiously compelling enlargements of banknotes, stock certificates, and other forms of currency.
Saki Yamaji: a light
26 March - 6 April 2013
Maison d'Art Osaka
(Osaka)
Lately Yamaji has been devoting herself to paintings that bring to life the richly evocative world of sunlight reflecting off new spring leaves. This recent exhibition of over a dozen works in this vein ranged from oils on 1.6-meter-square panels to much smaller paintings and drawings.
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