HOME > PICKS
Picks :

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 March 2014
| 1 | 2 |
Osaka City Museum of Modern Art Collection: Modern Avant-Garde Graphics
17 January - 5 March 2014
ddd gallery
(Osaka)
Still in the planning stages, the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art is scheduled to open in 2020. Meanwhile the museum's planning office has been generous in offering frequent previews of the remarkable works in its collection. This show focuses on 20th-century art and design from various heydays of the avant-garde: Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, and the neoplastic De Stijl movement. Featured are some 50 masterpieces from the 1920s to 1930s and 1950s to 1960s.

Daido Moriyama: endless works N/S
23 January - 23 March 2014
Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum
(Okinawa)
Boasting a total of 922 works exhibited over four periods in overlapping increments of 600 at a time, this is the biggest retrospective ever for iconic photographer Daido Moriyama (b. 1938). The images are categorized under dualistic themes -- Hokkaido/Okinawa, monochrome/color, and so on (the show title's "N/S" refers to north/south) -- which effectively place his oeuvre along space/time coordinates in three dimensions.
City in Memory
1 - 22 March 2014
Horikawa Danchi, Kyoto
(Kyoto)
Located in downtown Kyoto, Horikawa Danchi was Japan's first postwar housing-retail complex, with shops on the first floor and apartments above. Modeled after the city's machiya town houses, its distinctive ambience made it a coveted residential address. The now-dilapidated site currently houses a program, sponsored by Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery @KCUA, in which 12 artists have created a "place for experience" with works sharing the theme "place of memory."
The Power of Manga: Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori

15 January - 10 March 2014

Osaka Museum of History
(Osaka)
Respectively hailed (according to the curators) as the "god" and "king" of manga, Osamu Tezuka (1928-89) and Shotaro Ishinomori (1938-98) are inarguably two of the most celebrated masters of the form. This show takes their work as the launching point for a look at the origins and development of manga and anime. Included are original manuscripts, films and videos, and a replica of Tokiwa-so, the legendary ramshackle Tokyo apartment house that was home to so many of manga's greats in their early days.
Imari: Japanese Porcelain for European Palaces

25 January - 16 March 2014
Suntory Museum of Art
(Tokyo)
Imari ware, so named because it was shipped from the port of Imari in Kyushu, was the first porcelain produced in Japan. Originating in the early 17th century in the Arita district of what is now Saga Prefecture, it was exported to Europe by the Dutch East India Company. This show traces the waxing and waning fortunes of exported Imari ware during the 17th and 18th centuries, its reception overseas, and the evolution of its decorative designs.
Yoshimi Okuda: Selected Masterpieces from the Collection

23 November 2013 - 9 March 2014
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
(Hyogo)
Okuda (1931-2011) painted conceptual, flat-plane works in the sixties and seventies, but from the eighties on his oeuvre consisted almost exclusively of abstract-expressionist compositions with powerfully delineated strokes in a single color (which varied with the work) on a black background. Late in life he would leave sections of the black field exposed, thrusting it into relief in a reversal of background and foreground.
Koji Kakinuma: Exploring Calligraphy

23 November 2013 - 2 March 2014
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
(Ishikawa)
Kakinuma takes calligraphy to expressionistic extremes, standing atop a five-meter-square sheet of paper and wielding a huge brush with which he paints everything from Chinese characters to letters of the alphabet. Droplets of sumi ink fly hither and yon, and the artist's footprints and handprints appear everywhere: more often than not it is hard to make out exactly what the text says. This is not so much calligraphy as a form of action painting.
Shimabuku: Noto

27 April 2013 - 2 March 2014
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
(Ishikawa)
In this year-long project/exhibition, Berlin-based multimedia artist Shimabuku presents the ongoing fruits of his travels on the Noto Peninsula, which juts into the Sea of Japan north of Kanazawa. A video chronicles the making of kuchiko, a dried preparation of sea-cucumber ovaries, while an installation recreates the process of ironmaking, a local vocation of choice during the kuchiko off-season. Other works feature a variety of octopus pots, and a video of music improvised with contemporary composer Takehisa Kosugi and objects found on-site.
Maywa Denki: Nonsense Machines
21 January - 9 February 2014
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
(Ishikawa)
Since its 1993 debut, Maywa Denki has been a reliable source of nonsensical ideas made real. The 21st Century Museum offers the wacky performance-art unit an appropriate venue at which to showcase its lesser-known output of the 2000s.
Ryuhei Matsuo: Tobira
18 January - 8 February 2014
Matsuo Megumi + Voice Gallery pfs/w
(Kyoto)
Matsuo paints landscapes with vaguely disquieting moods and puzzling motifs, and therein lies their charm. Apple, showing an apple placed before a door, and other works like Red House, Tobira (Door), and SEEING, generate somber, sometimes even sinister impressions that linger after one has left the gallery.
| 1 | 2 |