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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. |
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| Naohiro Udagawa: Assembly |
| 5 - 23 January 2017 |
QUIET NOISE arts and break
(Tokyo) |
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| Up-and-coming photographer Udagawa has been busy of late, forming the performance-art unit Spew with fellow photographers Daisuke Yokota and Koji Kitagawa in 2016, publishing a zine, and exhibiting and selling the group's prints. Here, however, he struck out on his own with a solo display of prints in an installation format that highlighted the idiosyncratic poetics of his work. |
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| Tomoko Arakawa: tsubo |
| 7 - 15 January 2017 |
Kunst Arzt
(Kyoto) |
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| The wood sculptures Arakawa presented here brought to mind ritual objects symbolizing folk deities, talismans, and genitalia. All were covered with hair, ranging from long black wigs to what resembled stubbly body hair. Accompanying these were a number of ceramic "hairy urns" with surfaces entirely covered in false eyelashes. By thus likening these surfaces to human skin, Arakawa foregrounded the generally ignored element of tactility in sculpture surfaces. |
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| Marie Yoshiki: Living Room |
| 17 January - 4 February 2017 |
Sai Gallery
(Osaka) |
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| Yoshiki strategically piles up multiple layers of ink to produce silkscreen prints that confront us with the disparity between data (images reduced to two dimensions) and substance (ink layers output in three dimensions). The thick textures of the ink vie with the spatial order of our perception of depth in the picture plane. A streak of violence lies hidden in these superficially delicate works, which dismantle our trust in the sense of sight. |
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| Tsutomu Yamagata: Ten Disciples |
| 17 December 2016 - 4 February 2017 |
Zen Foto Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Photographer Yamagata began shooting his latest series in 2011 at Tamagawa Hot Springs in the northern prefecture of Akita. While researching alternative treatments for his cancer-stricken father, he learned of this remote valley where cancer patients go in hopes of a cure from the hot water and radiation-emitting rocks. He began frequenting the place and capturing images of its visitors and landscape, which he says reminded him of paintings in which the Buddha, on the verge of entering Nirvana, lies surrounded by his ten disciples. |
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| Rieko Honma / Yasunori Murayama: raison d'être |
| 21 - 29 January 2017 |
BankART Studio NYK
(Kanagawa) |
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| This joint undertaking is the product of an encounter between photographers Honma and Murayama two years ago, when they realized their works shared much in common. The title reflects a mutual desire to "advance one step at a time by rethinking our role in society, the reasons why we take photographs, the reasons for art." One looks forward to a step-by-step evolution in the content of their work in future shows. |
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| Yumiko Sugano |
| 23 January - 10 February 2017 |
Galerie Tokyo Humanité
(Tokyo) |
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| About a decade ago, oil painter Sugano began exhibiting serene still lifes of tableware. Whereas those earlier works were simple compositions of dishes arranged in a row, her new ones are complex, Escher-like affairs. The objects sit on labyrinthine arrays of shelves, or float in space devoid of a background. More than simply placing vessels in a space, she seems to be focusing on the larger "vessel" of the space itself. Ultimately, however, space is invisible and unpaintable, so the eye returns to the objects therein. |
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| Saburo Ota: Print Works |
| 12 - 31 January 2017 |
Gallery Natsuka & Cross View Arts
(Tokyo) |
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| Five shelves along the wall are lined with sheets of paper in a variety of colors, 200 in all. The sequence appears random at first, but in fact the sheets are arranged in alphabetical order, by the English name of each color. Every letter is represented, including Q and X, which do not correspond to any color names. As we shuttle back and forth between the colors and our expectations, we find ourselves pondering anew our assumptions about color in the things we look at. |
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