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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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2 December 2013 |
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| Kyoko Taniyama: Perspective |
| 5 - 27 October 2013 |
Plaza Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Metal boxes containing black-and-white aerial photographs line the wall, with latitude and longitude lines forming a grid on the glass covering each image. The artist selected these locations as part of a project in which she interviews various people about places important to them, then finds the spot on Google Maps and photographs the satellite image. The interviews, which are available for reading in a pamphlet at the gallery, provide illuminating episodes about each place. |
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| The Life and Art of Yokoyama Taikan: His Mentor, Friends and Inspirations |
| 5 October - 24 November 2013 |
Yokohama Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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| Nihonga painter Taikan Yokoyama (1868-1958) was a disciple of Tokyo School of Fine Arts founder and The Book of Tea author Tenshin Okakura (1862-1913); later in his career he befriended younger artists like Shiko Imamura, Misei Kosugi, Usen Ogawa, and Keisen Tomita. Not only colleagues but traveling and drinking companions, these men were a source of much of the inspiration that spurred Yokoyama to new heights of stylistic innovation, placing him at the zenith he still occupies in the Nihonga pantheon. The show features some 140 works by Taikan and his friends, introduced in the context of these mutually influential relationships. |
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| Kodai Nakahara: Migration or Retrospective |
| 27 September - 4 November 2013 |
The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art
(Okayama) |
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| This is the first major retrospective by Okayama native son Nakahara, a highly original multimedia artist who has wielded a significant influence on Japanese art since the 1980s and continues to do so. The exhibition ranges from his earliest efforts, to reproductions by the artist himself of lost works, to recently completed projects that had long remained unfinished, to his latest experiments. |
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| Satomi Fukushima: Fusuma-e |
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toutousha
(Kyoto)
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| The venue is an elegant old wooden house in Kyoto, close by the renowned Zen temple Daitokuji. Here Fukushima, a young Kyoto-based artist, has covered the sliding fusuma panels of the interior with paintings that involve no brushwork. Instead she pours dye onto the paper and creates patterns from the resulting blots, blurs and traces of the dye. Though it fills an entire room, her work does not hem the viewer in, but rather seems to expand the space, imbuing it with a delightfully tranquil mood. |
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| Tsurui Kanako Exhibition |
| 1 - 6 October 2013 |
gallery morning kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| Tsurui's disarmingly retro-style paintings positively swarm with people, generally engaged in very ordinary activities. But lurking among them are characters with deranged expressions on their faces, doing odd things. These glimpses of an offbeat, almost grotesque humor, manifested through a sharp eye for detail and human quirkiness, lend a forceful impact to much of Tsurui's work. |
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| Suda Issei: nagi no hira - fragments of calm |
| 28 September - 1 December 2013 |
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Tokyo) |
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| Viewing veteran photographer Suda's work, one is struck less by wonder than by a queasy unease at his knack for finding and shooting unsettling images. His uncanny ability to sniff out the bizarre in the quotidian never fails to astonish. It is a shamanistic talent, one that enables him to call up and inhabit his photos with otherworldly spirits. |
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| Seiji Kumagai: Haruiroha -- kasumi no naka e |
| 21 September - 3 November 2013 |
Photography Gallery Poetic Scape
(Tokyo) |
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| These landscapes, whose series title roughly translates to "varieties of spring -- into the mist," are quiet and unpretentious. Kumagai treads with a light step through forests and beside ponds on the northern island of Hokkaido, casually snapping his camera shutter as he goes. Tiny ripples spreading across a water surface or wisps of mist wafting through the air gently dissolve the distance between photographer and subject, giving these scenes the feel of a languid conversation between man and nature. |
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| Daikanyama Installation 2013 |
| 13 October - 4 November 2013 |
Daikanyama district, Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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| In this art competition, works by nine selected artists or groups were installed in public spaces scattered throughout Tokyo's tony Daikanyama district, centered around the Hillside Terrace gallery and shopping complex. Tatsuya Kitamura's Mono-hoshi (Hanging Things) installation consisted of an ominously realistic (but fake) one-meter-diameter boulder suspended by a chain from the second floor of the Terrace. Unfortunately its impact lasted only as long as one's first glimpse, with no significant effect on the surrounding environment. Better luck next time. |
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| Masumi Nakaoka: Buffer |
| 11 October - 3 November 2013 |
Art Front Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| In all the paintings in this series, the center is occupied by a blank square, appearing as if a signpost or billboard in the midst of the abstractified landscape that surrounds it has been whited out. The square consists of unpainted canvas, so it could also be viewed as a white canvas placed in the middle of the picture. Then again, it could also be a gate to another dimension, one even further removed from everyday reality than the dimension of the picture plane. |
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