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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.
1 July 2013
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Taro Okamoto: The Shamanism
20 April - 7 July 2013
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
(Kanagawa)
It's a not-so-well known fact that during his sojourn as a student in Paris, avant-garde artist Okamoto (1911-96) was influenced by the studies of shamanism published by religious scholar Mircea Eliade. This exhibition highlights the philosophical link between Eliade's work and Okamoto's as revealed in the latter's paintings, sculptures, and photographs.

1968 -- Japanese Photography
11 May - 15 July 2013
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Tokyo)
1968 was the year that student protests erupted on campuses worldwide, and Japan was no exception. Framing this watershed year, over 250 photos shot between 1966 and 1974 trace how Japanese photographers portrayed those turbulent times as both chroniclers and catalysts of the social upheaval around them.
Extremist Art: Expression of the Death Penalty
20 April - 21 July 2013
Tomonotsu Museum
(Hiroshima)
An exhibition of some 300 works of art by death-row inmates marks the first anniversary of this museum by the Seto Inland Sea. The show begins abruptly with a painting by Masumi Hayashi, sentenced to death for the Wakayama Poisoned Curry Incident of 1998. Titled Nation and Murder, it is a symbolic work depicting tears and what appears to be a blindfold, all in red against a black background.
Tokyo Story 2013 Part 2 "The Artist"

2 May - 7 July 2013
Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya
(Tokyo)
After a year-long hiatus, the Shibuya branch of Tokyo Wonder Site reopens with Artist, a collaborative work on the themes of "the artist as self" and "to live as an artist" by Hiroshi Ashikaga, Ichiro Endo, and Takashi Kuribayashi, Tokyo Wonder Site's 2012 creators-in-residence. The installation seems to consist of little more than a metal cage and a triple-screen video display of a forest, shrine, and torii gate, but the artists, who are ostensibly the "work" itself, promise to transform the exhibition space over the course of the show.
kei fu shu jo

14 June - 14 July 2013
Kyoto Art Center
(Kyoto)
In their self-produced group show Zon Ito, Tomohiko Ogawa, and Atsushi Nishijima seek the presence of ma (space) in the images of four Chinese characters: kei (view or shadow), fu (wind or style), shu (meaning or taste), and jo (emotion). According to the flyer, they draw their inspiration from the words of the physicist and Nobel laureate Hideki Yukawa: "He who recognizes the natural laws underlying reality is a master; he who recognizes the natural harmony underlying reality is a poet."
Osamu Kokufu: Cosmosphere

22 June - 28 July 2013
Otani Memorial Art Museum, Nishinomiya City
(Hyogo)
Kokufu has specialized to date in large sculptures with automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles, and other modes of transport as his motifs of choice. Here he introduces a mix of the early works that established him as a uniquely inventive artist; recent objects that incorporate living plants; and his latest contrivances, which actually function as moving vehicles. Through the interstices between art and technology he casts a gimlet eye on both present and future.
30th Anniversary: Kaiyodo Figure World

2 - 7 May 2013
Shibuya Station Tokyu Toyoko Store 8F Exhibit Hall
(Tokyo)
The Osaka collectibles maker Kayodo has been churning out plastic figurines of all sorts, from Godzilla to Ultraman, for three decades now. Converting two-dimensional film and animation characters into 3D objects is like trying to turn a cubist painting by Picasso into a sculpture, but Kayodo has always gone the extra mile, rendering substances like fire and water in solid form, and providing cinematic backdrops replete with perspective and motion.

Tamame Akamatsu

23 April - 5 May 2013
Gallery Suzuki
(Kyoto)
Akamatsu offers up a series of paintings of her young daughter in everyday settings: at a school athletic event, heading out the door on a snowy day, eating, playing. These works appear to be swiftly and casually drawn, but the blur of paint over lines and the glow of the pale color tones make them radiantly beautiful.
Tamaki Kawaguchi: A Colorful Alienation
30 April - 5 May 2013
Art Space Niji
(Kyoto)
Opening the gallery door, one entered a narrow space enclosed in clear plastic sheets to find Kawaguchi wearing a white costume that resembled a factory uniform and painting a butterfly seemingly in midair. In fact the butterflies painted on the plastic were to gradually proliferate in the course of the exhibition -- a performance that sought to evoke the ambiguous quality of existence within the uncertain flow of time.
Kano Sanraku and Sansetsu
30 March - 12 May 2013
Kyoto National Museum
(Kyoto)
This ambitious retrospective showcased the work of two painters of the Momoyama and early Edo periods, Kano Sanraku (1559-1635) and Kano Sansetsu (1590-1651), both exponents of the "Kyo-Kano" school of Kyoto-based disciples of the great Kano Eitoku. Highlights included four works by Sansetsu now in collections overseas, among them Taoist Immortals (from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and Old Plum Tree (from the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
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