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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 October 2014
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Nobuyoshi Araki: Photography for the Afterlife -- Love Journey
9 August - 5 October 2014
Niigata City Art Museum
(Niigata)
This ongoing series of shows by the photographer in his dotage combines a retrospective of his best-known work with a generous helping of new pieces. By far the most intriguing is the series Aisetsu (literally "love-cut"), in which Araki takes a bunch of polaroid prints he has shot over the years, cuts them in two with scissors, and glues them together in new juxtapositions. The results are well worth a look.

Outside the Window Awaits a Journey of Love
27 September - 30 November 2014
Ashiya City Museum of Art and History
(Hyogo)
Centered around the poetry of Shuntaro Tanikawa and the theme of "landscapes," this exhibition showcases three young artists -- Motoyuki Shitamichi, Yuki Hayashi, and Yukihiro Yamagami -- augmented by works from the museum collection by Narashige Koide, Kanbei Hanaya, Saburo Murakami, and Jiro Yoshihara, all artists associated with the Ashiya area.
Art Scope 2012-2014: Remains of Their Journeys

12 July - 13 October 2014

Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
(Tokyo)
This series of shows presents the fruits of Art Scope, an artist-exchange program between Japan and Germany sponsored by Daimler Foundation Japan. Particularly striking are Benedikt Partenheimer's images of people in protective suits standing around in ordinary environments, and Ryosuke Imamura's exceedingly delicate interventions in the everyday.
Form in Art -- Yuichi Yokoyama Exhibition: This is that, touch it.

19 July - 9 November 2014

Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
(Hyogo)
Large projections of neo-manga artist Yokoyama's drawings cover the four walls; on the gallery floor is an installation of works from the museum collection and other objects that resonate with the images. This is the latest edition of the Hyogo's celebrated annual exhibition of "touchable" works geared to the visually impaired.
Landmark Project V: Hotaro Koyama + Miyako Ishiuchi + Kohske Kawase

1 August - 3 November 2014
Tsurumi and Kannai districts, Yokohama
(Kanagawa)
Part of BankART's ambitious Dreams of East Asia event, Landmark Project V aims to "reveal spaces forgotten and abandoned in city life" by filling sites all over Yokohama with art. Three standouts are Koyama's display of ten huge monochrome prints of the waters of Yokohama harbor, mounted on the walls of shuttered shops under the elevated tracks at Kokudo Station; Ishiuchi's photo series Silken Dreams at the former Teisan Warehouse; and Kawase's sublime installation, which seems to breathe in tandem with the space it occupies on the first floor of the grand old Kanagawa Prefectural Office Building, built in 1928.
Selected One Hundred Marginal Art Project in Satoyama / Mizuki Tanaka's Exhibition: Sento Paint Picture

19 July - 26 October 2014
Matsudai Nohbutai Gallery
(Niigata)
The landscapes painted on the walls of Japan's public baths (sento) are a kind of immovable art that is born and dies in one place. As the number of bathhouses steadily declines, so have the ranks of professional sento artists -- only three remain active today. One of them, Mizuki Tanaka, majored in art history in college and was so taken with sento art that she decided to paint it herself. After a nine-year apprenticeship she started working on her own last year. This show is part of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field program that runs during the years between instances of the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, which sprawls vastly across that region of rural Niigata (the next Triennale is in the summer of 2015).
TWS-Emerging 2014

9 August 2014 - 1 February 2015
Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya
(Tokyo)
An adjunct of its open-call Tokyo Wonder Wall exhibition, Tokyo Wonder Site's annual TWS-Emerging program has picked 19 young artists for a series of monthly shows extending into the next year. In the opening installment this past August, Kaho Shimizu displayed slightly skewed paintings of symmetrical objects that called to mind sports arenas. Shinichiro Koromo's more thickly daubed oils were vaguely landscape-ish, while Ayako Honda contributed four eccentric yet similar sculptures that exuded a pop-expressionist sensibility.
Shigeo Gocho: The Other Called "I"

29 August - 26 October 2014
Niigata City Art Museum
(Niigata)
The title references Self and Others, the legendary photo collection by Niigata-born Gocho, who died in 1983 at age 36. But the highlight here is the section that replicates Familiar Street Scenes, his 1982 exhibition at Tokyo's Minolta Photo Space, demonstrating just how brilliantly Gocho arranged that sequence of images to capture the visitor's eye.
ALL NIGHT HAPS "Peek a midday from darkness"
5 September 2014 - 28 February 2015
Higashiyama Artists Placement Service
(Kyoto)
Sponsored by the nonprofit HAPS organization, this six-month series of all-night art events aims to support young Kyoto creators and curators. Curated by Masaki Nakamoto, the current program features a first-time solo show by music-video artist Chikara Urasaki, wall-sized mural art by street-culture unit ATTACK THA MOON, and new work by video artist Yuki Hayashi.
TUNNEL VISION
26 September - 5 October 2014

Kunst Arzt
(Kyoto)
Artist Keiko Masumoto curates a show that scrutinizes the angles from and circumstances in which one views works of art, as well as the spaces they occupy and their surrounding environments. The four participants -- Ryosuke Imamura, Hirosuke Kadota, Yasuhiro Kiyoto, and Masumoto herself -- are all young, spirited Kansai artists working with diverse styles and media.
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