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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 March 2016

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Curators at Work

9 January - 21 March 2016

Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts
(Tochigi)

The job of curator has garnered increased visibility since the nineties, when art museums began proliferating in Japan. If curation were a board game, it would start with a presentation at a planning meeting, then advance through budget requests, grant applications, document research, selecting and negotiating for exhibits, working with displayers, producing a catalogue, writing essays and p.r. materials, and acquiring and installing the exhibited works. The goal, of course, is the Opening. The job is no picnic, as this exhibition about exhibiting attests.

Kano Kazunobu's Five Hundred Arhats

1 January - 13 March 2016

Zojoji Treasures Gallery
(Tokyo)

The gallery at Tokyo's august Zojoji temple displays the Five Hundred Arhats by late-Edo artist Kano Kazunobu (1816-63). Though the titular sages had long been a subject of Buddhist art, Kazunobu's paintings were unprecedented in scale and an expressionistic style bordering on the bizarre. The waning days of the shogunate were a period of transition as Western art began infiltrating Japan, and Kazunobu appears to have seized the opportunity to try his hand at numerous new techniques with gusto.

Genius Loci: The Higashikawa Awards

30 January - 15 May 2016

Towada Art Center
(Aomori)

In this showcasing of winners of awards presented since 1985 by Higashikawa, Hokkaido, a self-styled "Phototown" that hosts the Higashikawa Photo Festival, the common theme is the genius loci, or guardian spirit of a place. And indeed, a great many of these works suggest an intuitive perception of the presence of such "spirits" on the part of the photographer. The result is an uncanny resonance among the images shown here.

The Best Selection of the Ohara Museum of Art

20 January - 4 April 2016

The National Art Center, Tokyo
(Tokyo)

The daunting lineup of works on display demonstrates the breadth of this diverse collection, ranging from ancient Egypt to medieval and modern Europe to contemporary Japanese art. Despite its hoary reputation as one of Japan's first art museums, the Kurashiki-based Ohara is not yet a century old. It appears to be keeping up with the times as it increasingly favors contemporary works.

Kikuji Kawada: Last Things

8 January - 5 March 2016

Photo Gallery International (PGI)
(Tokyo)

Ever since his first collection, the celebrated Chizu (The Map), veteran photographer Kawada (b. 1933) has viewed the phenomena of this world through the lens of their inevitable decay and destruction. If anything, the power of his melancholy, meditative imagery has only grown in recent years. The creative urge manifest in his outpouring of new work since turning 80 is remarkable in itself.

Yoko Ishii: Beyond the Border

5 - 19 January 2016

Ginza Nikon Salon
(Tokyo)

A solo show by photographer Ishii, known for her fixation on deer, a species with special significance in Japan. In sacred spots like Nara's Kasuga Shrine and Miyajima's Itsukushima Shrine, deer are protected and pampered as "messengers of the gods"; elsewhere they are generally reviled as pests who eat crops. In these shots the deer of Nara and Miyajima are seen occupying urban environments, to impressively surrealistic effect.

Yoichi Umetsu: From Lamb to Mutton

20 November 2015 - 11 January 2016

NADiff Gallery
(Tokyo)

In the middle of the gallery sits a bed piled with blankets and clothing. A headful of human hair peeks out from one end, but doesn't appear to be real. Plastic bottles and half-eaten sweets are strewn across a side table. On the black-painted wall hang one large painting and seven small ones. As an installation it's sublimely slipshod.

Chiyuki Sakagami: Positive Transference Part 1: Chinoiserie

9 January - 7 February 2016

MEM
(Tokyo)

Sakagami paints minutely pointillistic works in pigment or ink with a predominantly blue palette. While often treated as an outsider artist, she has earned accolades from the art establishment for her organic, abstract patterns, which call to mind primeval lifeforms. The works on exhibit here, which appear to be inspired by legends from the Tang Dynasty, include rows of symbols that resemble Chinese text.

All Begun in Kamakura, Part 3: 1951-1965: The Birth of The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura

17 October 2015 - 31 January 2016

The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura
(Kanagawa)

Highlighting works by Tetsugoro Yorozu, Harue Koga, Shunsuke Matsumoto, and Saburo Aso, this was the swan-song exhibition for The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, which closed on 31 January. Not only was it the world's third modern art museum, following those in New York and Paris, but in 65 years of operation it hired only seven directors and 31 curators. A museum run by such a small and stable leadership probably does not exist anywhere else. The Kamakin will be sorely missed.

Hiroshi Nomura: Invisible Ink

16 December 2015 - 6 February 2016

Poetic Scape
(Tokyo)

The premise is that an Englishman named William Louis has created a product, Invisible Ink, with which he hopes to revolutionize photography. In fact he exists only in the imagination of photographer Nomura, who employs the cyanotype method to reproduce such startling images as Van Gogh's self-portrait. Nomura never fails to come up with surprising new blends of fact and fiction.

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