 |
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. |
|
|
|
15 January 2016 |
 |
| 1 | 2 | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Emi Nakata: Yosuga |
| 3 - 9 November 2015 |
Nikon Salon Shinjuku
(Tokyo) |
|
| Since 2011, Nakata has been photographing mementoes of her mother, who died when she was ten (the show title, Yosuga, means "reminder"). Besides watches, notebooks, and dolls, she shoots portraits of herself wearing her mother's clothing. These images -- quietly decorous yet imbued with a certain tension -- draw the viewer inexorably into this story of mother and daughter. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Kenichi Obana: In the night time |
| 7 November - 5 December 2015 |
Gallery MoMo Projects
(Tokyo) |
|
| Obana's installation consists of "situational sculptures" of human figures interacting with various objects (and one dog), all made of acrylic-painted jelutong wood. The figures are men whose heads are covered by pointed masks; they watch TV, stand by a car, kneel by a bed, or hold up a torch. Who are these masked men, anyway? Do they represent Everyman attempting to hide his true nature? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Is It Possible "Tohoku-ga"? - Museum for Hypothetical State of Tohoku |
| 26 November - 6 December 2015 |
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
|
| Posing the question "What if Tohoku were an independent nation?", this show created a museum for the "regional state" of Tohoku inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. What are the possibilities for art in Tohoku, a land on the northeastern edge of Japan -- itself a land on the edge of the world? At the least, the idea has the potential to stand the conventional global orientation of contemporary art on its head. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Disabilities (Virtual) |
| 12 September - 13 December 2015 |
Tomonotsu Museum
(Hiroshima) |
|
Nobumasa Kushino plans the most ambitious shows of any curator in Japan. Going beyond the museum's ostensible focus on people with disabilities, he has introduced work by all manner of outsiders -- death row convicts, juvenile delinquents, and the elderly, to name a few. This valedictory show featured 14 artists, ranging from Ai, the chimpanzee made famous through the Ai Project, to Norimasa Takeda, who collects objects that bear traces of institution staffers he is fond of, and Wakako Miura, who creates food samples from felt and wool yarn. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Road from Rimpa: The Work of Sekka Kamisaka and Taro Yamamoto |
| 23 October - 29 November 2015 |
Museum "Eki" Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
|
| A two-artist exhibition that spans time and space, featuring the early-20th-century Kyoto artist and designer Sekka Kamisaka (1866-1942), known as the last proponent of the classical Rimpa school, and the postwar avant-gardist Taro Yamamoto (1919-94), who championed a hybrid "Nippon-ga" that mixed classical Japanese painting techniques with contemporary motifs. Offering some 50 paintings, prints, and woodwork by Kamisaka and 40 paintings, prints, and ceramic works by Yamamoto, the show purports to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Rimpa school. |
|
|
|
 |
|
Railway Art Festival Vol. 5: Alternative Train |
24 October - 26 December 2015 |
Naniwabashi Station Art Area B1
(Osaka) |
|
| Located in the underground concourse of Osaka's Naniwabashi Station, Art Area B1 hosts an annual art festival on railroad-related themes. This fifth iteration, produced by photographer Takashi Homma, boasted a potpourri of exhibits and performances, from Homma's video homage to Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders, and the Lumière brothers, to Shuta Hasanuma's sonic creations, to pinhole photos by Homma displayed in dot architects' full-scale model of a Keihan Electric Railway car. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Karaemon, Lovers of Chinese-Style Painting: Buzen, Roen, Jakuchu, and Others |
| 31 October - 13 December 2015 |
Osaka Museum of History
(Osaka) |
|
| The mid-Edo period was a time of prolific output by celebrated painters like Ito Jakuchu, Soga Shohaku, and Maruyama Okyo. But these men were all based in Kyoto and tended to overshadow their contemporaries down the road in Osaka. This exhibition focuses on two Osaka artists of the same era, Suminoe Buzen (1734-1806) and Hayashi Roen (active ca. 1770-80), which it labels with the monicker karaemon, meaning "lovers of Chinese painting (kara-e)" -- a major influence on all these artists. |
|
|
 |
|
| Poems by Painters, Paintings by Poets |
| 19 September - 8 November 2015 |
The Hiratsuka Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
|
| Exploring connections between painting and poetry, this show juxtaposes works in both mediums by 63 artists. The poetry-writing painters include Tetsugoro Yorozu, Shunsuke Matsumoto, Seizo Tashima, and Takanobu Kobayashi; among the painterly poets are Kotaro Takamura, Sakutaro Hagiwara, Kenji Miyazawa, Taruho Inagaki, Katsue Kitazono, and Shuzo Takiguchi. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
