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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 December 2015

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Living Locally: Reconsidering Critical Regionalism

9 October 2015 - 12 January 2016

Arts Maebashi
(Gunma)

How do architects and artists address regional community conditions today? Several Japan-based architects with worldwide practices, among them Sou Fujimoto and Atelier Bow-Wow, offer varied responses in this show, which seeks to identify new trends in locality-oriented architecture in the context of post-3.11 society.

Matsutani Currents

10 October - 6 December 2015

Otani Memorial Art Museum
(Hyogo)

This retrospective offers a comprehensive look at some 60 years of activity, up to and including installations he prepared for the current exhibition, by Gutai veteran Matsutani. Even in his earliest, geometrical Nihonga, he was painting chromosome-like shapes that presaged a long-term fascination with such manifestations of organic energy as cell division and reproduction.

From Ukiyo-e to Photography: Cultural Awakening in Japan's Visual Field

10 October - 6 December 2016

Edo-Tokyo Museum
(Tokyo)

While photography, oil painting and other modes of realistic expression had a big impact on the techniques employed by ukiyo-e artists, early Japanese photography also returned the favor, adroitly picking up on the traditional ukiyo-e themes of famous places, popular actors, and beautiful women. This show dramatically highlights the interplay between these two seemingly disparate media.

Shu Ogawara: Best Selection

24 October - 13 December 2015

Shu Ogawara Museum of Art
(Hokkaido)

Though best known as a surrealist, Ogawara (1911-2002) dabbled in war paintings in the forties and as a result was forced to sever his ties with art associations after the war -- a stigma shared by other painters of some repute. The current show at a museum dedicated to his work testifies to Ogawara's talent and versatility, proof of which lies in his rapid shifts between surrealism and cubism, or oils and fairy-tale illustrations, during the prewar period.

Koganecho Bazaar 2015: Art Together with the Town

1 October - 3 November 2015

Koganecho district, Yokohama
(Kanagawa)

Perhaps constrained by the titular theme of this year's Bazaar, the participating artists and the works they produced all seemed cut from similar cloth. The sole exception was Yokohama's own Merino, whose Renaissance-inspired egg tempera paintings sail off on a tangent into their own phantasmagoric world, one unrelated to any actual "town."

Yuki Watanabe: Uchiumi

15 September - 3 October 2015

Norton Gallery
(Tokyo)

Photographer Watanabe shot this series about the Seto Inland Sea (the Uchiumi of the title), which her home prefecture of Okayama faces, over a period of six years. Taken from a ferryboat, these are blurred, wavering images of islands, ships, and coastal lights -- still photos that never sit still, as if to evoke the internal flux of the photographer's own soul.

Nobuhiro Hanaoka: Statue of Clothes

26 September - 18 October 2015

Mori Yu Gallery
(Kyoto)

Hanaoka's objects appear to fall by intention into a no-man's land between sculpture and painting, sculpture and junk, contrivance and chance. Not so much collages as coercive disconnects, his works are like sudden, unexpected accidents that hint at a self-referential critique of current trends in Japanese sculpture.

Ryuta Ohtake

3 - 7 October 2015

Sunaba Gallery
(Osaka)

In separate but adjacent canvases, female and male figures stand in front of a white wall. Where the women are depicted in the fashion of stock video-game or anime bishojo (pretty young girl) characters, the men -- middle-aged, rumpled -- are jarringly realistic. The contrast between the female images, depersonalized for consumption as minimalist symbols, and the male images with their individualized, real-life attributes, makes for a provocative study in the codes of visual bias and desire that lurk within our representational systems.

Yuki Onodera: Muybridge's Twist

7 October - 10 November 2015

Zeit-Foto Salon
(Tokyo)

Onedera's canvases are disquieting. Nearly three meters high, they are made from photos of human figures with bodies twisted, juxtaposed, or otherwise deformed. The artist explains that she uses a process of photography, drawing, and collage to restore movement to the subjects in these still images as an extension of the work of Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), the legendary pioneer of stop-motion photography.

Masato Nakamura: Luminous Despair

10 October - 23 November 2015

3331 Arts Chiyoda, 1F Main Gallery
(Tokyo)

Founder of the 3331 Arts Chiyoda complex in a converted Tokyo school building, Nakamura held his first solo show in ten years here, a selection of some 700 photos out of thousands he took between 1989 and 1994 in Tokyo and Seoul, where he studied for several years. Most are monochrome prints. His Korean images are less an exploration of the country's novel aspects than they are a reflection of Nakamura's affinity for minimal and conceptual art, and for an "I am not doing, but being" approach to life.

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