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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 August 2016

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Tastumi Orimoto: Art x Life

29 April - 3 July 2016

Kawasaki City Museum
(Kanagawa)

An overview of Kawasaki native Orimoto's career as an artist and performer since the 1980s. Of special note: 270 photos from his Art Mama series chronicling life with his elderly mother. Orimoto's images claim to be no more than an accurate record of his circumstances, but they serve as a catalyst for interaction with viewers. Refreshingly devoid of artifice, the photos reflect Orimoto's fierce determination to link art directly to life.

Kazuo Kitai: Drifting Cloud Journeys

28 May - 8 June 2016

Billiken Gallery
(Tokyo)

Some 40 years ago, photographer Kitai traveled into remote areas of Japan with manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge, a journey that yielded the book Nagarekumo Tabi (Drifting Cloud Journeys). This show featured prints from the series on the occasion of their reissue as a solo photo collection by Kitai, published by Wides Shuppan. One is reminded of the impact Tsuge's "vagabond"-themed manga had on a previous generation. "The photos I shot were exactly like the pictures Tsuge drew," Kitai reminisces.

The World of Tatsuo Kinameri, Maritime Photographer

23 May - 4 June 2016

Galerie Omotesando
(Tokyo)

Kinameri (1897-1941), who worked for a steamship company, earned overnight fame as a "photographer of the seas" when he won first place in an amateur maritime photography competition. His street snapshots and close-ups of rocks and other objects evince a compositional eye in tune with the "new photography" of his day, while his shots of waves breaking on the deck of his ship have a dynamism that bursts the confines of the picture frame.

BankART AIR Open Studio 2016

27 May - 5 June 2016

BankART Studio NYK
(Kanagawa)

For two months, 50 artists or art units in residence took over two floors of Yokohama's BankART complex and produced the works displayed here. About one in ten was worth a look -- not a bad average. Taiwan's ZenPing Liao offered semi-abstract scenes of Yokohama, while Junya Kataoka created a device that dropped sheets of copy paper, one at a time, from atop a transparent square column; the sheets wafted gently down, retaining their horizontality.

Keiko Sasaoka: SHORELINE

24 May - 19 June 2016

photographers' gallery
(Tokyo)

In this, the third installment of photographer Sasaoka's ongoing SHORELINE series, she captures both mountains and seacoast along the Oi River in Shizuoka prefecture. Exploring the interface of land and sea from a perspective at once contemporary, yet transcending distinctions between past, present, and future, she produces color photography that emits a fengshui-like flow of gentle energy.

Minako Yoshida: Ordinary Days

1 - 12 June 2016

gallery Main
(Kyoto)

Two photographers, Yoshida and Kiriko, shared the gallery space in this dual show on the theme of selfhood. Yoshida's Ordinary Days is her first solo exhibition in nine years, a hiatus brought on, she says, by the day-to-day inertia of life with her artist husband. Through these 1,260 prints one can vicariously follow the ongoing vicissitudes in the photographer's point of view.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi: Little Girl Run For Your Life

3 June - 10 July 2016

Sogo Museum of Art
(Kanagawa)

A Japanese-born painter who chose to live and work in the United States, Kuniyoshi (1893-1953) battled wartime "enemy alien" stigma, served as first president of the Artists Equity Association, and was one of four artists chosen to represent the U.S. at the 1952 Venice Biennale. Posthumously, however, his style was dismissed as obsolete in the era of abstract expressionism. Given his work's striking resemblance to that of Jules Pascin or Ben Shahn, that critique is probably not just one born of prejudice.

Marika Oishi: Gestaltzerfall

7 - 12 June 2016

Kunst Arzt
(Kyoto)

To date Oishi has made it her practice to reduce the deluge of media information down to opaque materials. This show featured a live-painting production in which she covered a wall-size photo print of the atomic mushroom cloud over Hiroshima with oblaat, a transparent layer of starch used to wrap medicine or candy in Japan, which she then dissolved with applications of hydrochloric acid. The melted oblaat not only reminded one of bomb-melted skin, but also challenged the visual experience afforded by media images of the bombing.

Motoyuki Daifu: It's a Quiet Uneventful Day.

7 - 24 June 2016

Guardian Garden
(Tokyo)

Daifu made a big splash with his fragmentary, point-blank snapshots of family life at Guardian Garden's 29th Hitotsubo exhibition in 2007. The 26 prints making up his latest show, all blown up to poster size, are even more stunning: images of the dinner table and other at-home settings cut up, compressed, and recomposed with impressive precision, yet always retaining a modicum of tension and noise.

Saki Otsuka Photo Exhibition "3P"

24 June - 10 July 2016

Jinbocho Garou
(Tokyo)

Otsuka is a photographer and a professional sex performer. Her latest "3P" series features three male-female pairs, including the artist. The rapturous chaos of the events that transpire is given form by arranging over 100 cuts on a single A3 size contact sheet. Otsuka's powers of human observation through the medium of sexual activity seem to grow more acute with each exhibition.

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