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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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| Yoshihiko Ueda: M. River |
| 22 March - 25 May 2013 |
Gallery 916
(Tokyo) |
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| A year has passed since the photographer's solo show Materia opened Gallery 916, a 600-square-meter space in a renovated warehouse by the Tokyo docks that Ueda himself curates. Since then the gallery has showcased a series of prominent photographers -- Ralph Gibson, Taiji Arita, and Y. Ernest Satow among others. Now Ueda returns with a new series of his own; M. River picks up where the previous show left off, with images captured in the forests of Yakushima. |
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| Eriko Koga: Issan |
| 5 - 30 April 2013 |
Emon Photo Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| In 2015 the renowned temple complex atop Mt. Koya celebrates the 1,200th anniversary of its founding by the Shingon Buddhist master Kukai (Kobo Daishi). More than a few photographers have fallen under the spell of the place's sublime spiritual ambience, but Koga's work embraces a different approach from the usual. Her Issan series, the fruit of her close association with Mt. Koya since 2009, focuses primarily on the people -- monks and others -- she has met on the mountain. |
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| Shomei Tomatsu: Pencil of the Sun |
| 21 March - 15 April 2013 |
Canon Open Gallery in Shinagawa
(Tokyo) |
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| The death of Tomatsu (1930-2012) last December occasioned a reappraisal of the photographer's variegated career and his influence on photography in postwar Japan. Indeed, his departure has profound implications for the direction of contemporary photography. Featuring 16 prints from the Canon Photo Collection, this show revisited Tomatsu's prizewinning series of images of Okinawa in the late 1960s and early 1970s (first published in book form in 1975). |
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| Hajimeten: Chockablock Storage! |
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NADiff Gallery
(Tokyo)
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| Founded in 2010, Hajimeten is a loose affiliation of eight mostly Kansai-based artists (among them Kayo Ume, Patrick Tsai, Teppei Kaneuji, and Yosuke Kobashi) who occasionally join forces on endeavors undertaken "for the first time" (hajimete). At this Tokyo show they stuffed a basement gallery to the brim with an astonishing collection of, well, stuff. |
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| Side Core |
| 23 March - 21 April 2013 |
Terratoria
(Tokyo)
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| Terratoria, a new "creative space" in the Tennozu Isle highrise/warehouse district fronting Tokyo Bay, has declared its intention to focus on "graffiti-style" art. The three artists represented in the Side Core exhibition -- Enrico Isamu Oyama, Kota Takeuchi, and Nicolas Buffe -- share a concern with the relationship between media and the body. |
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| Akira Yamaguchi |
| 20 April - 19 May 2013 |
Sogo Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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| Yamaguchi has won a global following with his humorous juxtapositions of old and new Japanese motifs -- a samurai riding a vehicle that is part horse, part motorbike, for example. What makes such gags work is his flawless execution of traditional ukiyo-e and yamato-e techniques. His first solo show in Yokohama featured a "one-man international exhibition" consisting mostly of visual jokes of the one-off variety, such as a video titled Gunfire in which the sound of shots turns out to be the sputtering of a broken streetlamp. |
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| Tadashi Ono: From the 247th to the 341st day, Tohoku |
| 13 April - 5 May 2013 |
Institut Français du Japon - Kansai
(Kyoto) |
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| At the request of the Swiss architectural journal TRACÉS, photographer Ono visited the disaster-stricken Tohoku region, from Miyako in the north to Soma in the south, three times between November 2011 and February 2012. As Ono's images reveal, the timing of his reportage was delicate: over eight months after March 11, the worst of the horror had subsided, the rubble was being cleared -- yet along the coast, the scars of the tsunami remained terribly raw. Ono's show was part of Kyoto's citywide international photography festival, Kyotographie. |
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| Nobuaki Date: Ukulele and Umoregi |
| 16 - 28 April 2013 |
Art Space Niji
(Tokyo) |
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| Umoregi can mean bogwood or a state of obscurity. Date's art consists of building ukuleles from the wood of demolished buildings. This solo exhibition displayed seven of his instruments, including one made of materials from Osaka's former Festival Hall and another from Kobe's Nada Railway Station building, originally constructed in 1917. |
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| Revelation, Now by Taeko Tomiyama: A Response to September 11 and March 11 |
| 11 April - 19 May 2013 |
Tokyo Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| Painter and printmaker Tomiyama (b. 1921) has long been known for her commitment to addressing social issues and particularly for casting an unflattering eye on Japan's past behavior as a colonial power, ranging from forced labor in coal mines to the military's wartime treatment of "comfort women." In this exhibition she took up the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the nuclear disaster following the earthquake of March 11, 2011. Her series Hiruko and the Puppeteers: A Tale of Sea Wanderers uses oil and collage to critique a "theatrical" society and the wars that stemmed from 9.11. |
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| Taku Ibuki: Being "Right in the Middle" |
| 15 March - 5 May 2013 |
the three konohana
(Osaka) |
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| This new Osaka gallery celebrated its opening with a solo show by locally-based painter Ibuki (b. 1977). The three massive abstracts that cover the space's ten-meter-long wall from end to end are nothing short of breathtaking. The touch and the palette Ibuki brings to these works represents a noticeable departure from his style to date, suggesting that he has both the talent and the mettle to strike out in new directions. |
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