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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 February 2016

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Hisashi Eguchi: King of Pop

5 December 2015 - 31 January 2016

The Kawasaki City Museum
(Kanagawa)

The show has two parts: one devoted to Eguchi's prodigious output of hit manga, the other to his career as an illustrator since the 1980s. Mangaesque elements are still in evidence in the early years of the latter work, but over the decades one sees a steady progression toward the idiosyncratic realism of his style today. In the fashions and poses of his subjects, down to details as minute as the way he draws noses, Eguchi manages to blend cuteness with a certain dry eroticism.

Yuki Hayashi: Stand On 2015

24 November - 19 December 2015

Gallery Hosokawa
(Osaka)

Hayashi creates animated works by meticulously clipping and collaging images from the huge stash of photo files stored on his computer's hard disk. This installation combines animation on monitors, live-action films projected on the wall, and objects constructed with a 3D printer to create a space that brilliantly blurs the line between the real and the virtual.

Action Drawing: Diorama Maps and New Work

26 November 2015 - 17 January 2016

IMA Concept Store
(Tokyo)

This was Sohei Nishino's first solo show in Japan in four years. The photographer's forte is snapping thousands of monochrome shots of one of the world's major cities, then cutting up and arranging the contact prints in collages on canvas to form what he calls a "diorama map" of the city. Besides three diorama maps, this show introduced a new series of "day drawings," in which he uses the photogram method to create linear images from GPS records tracking his movements in a city over the course of a day. The two alternate approaches to "mapping" testify to the broadening of his oeuvre.

Nissan Art Award 2015

14 November - 27 December 2015

BankART Studio NYK 2F
(Kanagawa)

The automaker sponsors an exhibition of new works by up-and-coming artists. Grand Prix winner Yuko Mohri offered a water-circulating contraption (top image) summarizing her "Moray Moray Tokyo (Water Leak Tokyo)" research project on the bricolage-like solutions devised by station staff for water leakage in Tokyo's subways. Audience Award winner Tsuyoshi Hisakado's Quantize #5 (bottom image) created a mysterious space out of memories (bottom image).

Tomokazu Hiroe: Hellish Toy Story

20 November - 5 December 2015

Megumi Ogita Gallery
(Tokyo)

Painting solid-looking images of what look like toy soldiers atop flame patterns based on those seen in jigoku-zoshi, the 12th-century scrolls that depict Buddhist hells, Hiroe achieves a coexistence between the flat plane of traditional Yamato-e and the 3D techniques of Western painting. One standout in this show is a parody of Tsuguharu Fujita's Final Fighting on Attu, suggesting that even war paintings are fodder for satire these days.

Masao Okabe: Touching A-bombed Tree in Hiroshima

30 November - 5 December 2015

Toki Art Space
(Tokyo)

Okabe exhibits work made from frottages of the bark of trees exposed to radiation in Hiroshima and Fukushima. To the artist, frottaging is a means of conveying the meaning inherent in the object. He also adds words to the paper to give form not only to the surfaces of these nuked trees, but to the longer histories of exposure hidden under their bark.

JIS is it: Invisible Standards

5 - 20 December 2015

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
(Tokyo)

In this show by the art group Geijyutsu Complex (whose members are Ayako Ebata, Akiko Orito, Sayaka Machida, and Mayuko Yuge), the unifying theme is the Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) and their role as a defining extrinsic factor in the everyday lives of the Japanese. As such the standards also serve as one incentive in the production of art.

Momo Okabe: Bible & Dildo

26 November - 22 December 2015

Gallery Naruyama
(Tokyo)

The prizewinning photographer combines two series here: Dildo, which chronicles her relationships with two beloved partners, and Bible, which documents feelings of despair and fear provoked by death. In these 12 images she mixes scenes from India with those of areas devastated by the March 2011 tsunami, using saturated colors and the halation effect to convey the pains and sorrows of her life to the viewer.

Taiji Matsue: LIM

28 November - 26 December 2015

Taro Nasu
(Tokyo)

Matsue's latest photo series consists of shots of cemeteries in various parts of the world. Centering on Lima, Peru, but extending to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, these images make the case for Matsue's long-standing assertion that "cemeteries are cities."

Noe Aoki: Plasmolysis

5 December 2015 - 16 January 2016

Gallery Hashimoto
(Tokyo)

Plasmolysis is the separation of a cell membrane from the cell wall. In these woodcuts by sculptor Aoki, the images are indeed organic, resembling starfish or clumps of plant cells. The prints are linked to Aoki's recent sculpture series Protoplasm.

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