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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 June 2017

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Hiroshi Nomura: Doppelopment

11 March - 22 April 2017

Poetic Scape
(Tokyo)

Always a font of new and entertaining ideas, photographer Nomura does it again with his latest series of "fake snapshots" of what appear to be twins. In fact the model is his own daughter, posing in two positions superimposed against the same background. A fraternal twin himself, Nomura coined the word "doppelopment" for this process, from doppelganger, as in a person's ghostly double, and development, as in film.

Teppei Kaneuji: Symbols Are Not Symbols

11 - 30 March 2017

The Ueno Royal Museum
(Tokyo)

Host to the annual Vision of Contemporary Art (VOCA) event showcasing emerging artists, this time the museum offers a solo installation by Kaneuji, a past VOCA participant. Solid objects on the floor and reliefs on the walls share a colorfully cartoony sensibility. The mix of two- and three-dimensional work is trickily effective, and Kaneuji's style recalls the humor and irony of Roy Lichtenstein.

La Biennale Yochan 2017: Collage Cubisme

22 - 31 March 2017

Orie Art Gallery
(Tokyo)

Since 2011, curator and critic Yoshio Kato has been organizing his own "La Biennale Yochan." This year he brought to Tokyo a digest edition of the third such endeavor, held in Kobe last year. In keeping with the "Collage Cubisme" theme, 11 artists produced three-dimensional collages, most of them vividly colored and painstakingly constructed, making for a stimuli-packed presentation.

Oh Haji: Grandmother Island Chapter 1

4 - 25 March 2017

Matsuo Megumi + Voice Gallery pfs/w
(Kyoto)

Japan-born Korean textile artist Oh's exploration of personal roots and identity has taken her from her birthplace to Australia in recent years. Her latest project, "Grandmother Island," aspires to move personal histories and narratives beyond the frameworks of nation and the singular "I" and chronicle them as something shared by all of "us." This show presented work dyed and woven with the motif of an island floating in the sea. The project promises to be ongoing.

Kaoru Ohto: Subjective Photography vol.2

29 March - 15 April 2017

Studio 35 Minutes
(Tokyo)

Founded in Germany in the early 1950s by Otto Steinert, subjective photography was a movement that rejected the predominant postwar current of realism. This solo exhibition highlighted the work of Ohto (b. 1927), a leading exponent of subjective photography in Japan. In these 20 new prints reproduced from the few vintage prints remaining of Ohto's early output, an adherence to traditional photographic style coexists with a pursuit of new modes of expression.

Akira Ishiguro: Painting of Marble

7 April - 6 May 2017

Loko Gallery
(Tokyo)

Viewing the marble-patterned walls on some buildings in Europe got Ishiguro thinking, he says, about dichotomies like genuine vs. fake and true vs. false. Himself a trained painter of faux-marble surfaces, he now applies those techniques to works of art. Through the meticulous reproduction of marble patterns in his paintings, he addresses the question, "What is the truth within falsehood?" These "marble paintings" may in fact represent a new genre of art.

Midori Sato: Reflections

31 March - 23 April 2017

Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery
(Tokyo)

Lately, Sato has been painting on mirrors instead of canvas. Along with her usual images of closets, carpets, flowers and so on, the mirror itself becomes one more motif. By leaving parts of the surface unpainted, she confronts the viewer with a conundrum: if a flower painted on the mirror is part of the composition, what about the reflection of one's own face there?

Mitsutoshi Hanaga: 1000

28 April - 28 May 2017

NADiff Gallery
(Tokyo)

A retrospective of photographer Hanaga (1933-99), dovetailing with the publication of Mitsutoshi Hanaga 1000, the fifth volume in graphic designer Gento Matsumoto's "1000 Book Series." Hanaga's extensive documentation of the avant-garde artists and dancers of the sixties and seventies serves as an invaluable time capsule of those wild and woolly times.

Mirror Behind Hole: Photography into Sculpture vol.1 - Cozue Takagi

8 April - 13 May 2017

gallery αM
(Tokyo)

Museum curator and art critic Yuri Mitsuda is in the midst of curating a seven-part series titled "Mirror Behind Hole: Photography into Sculpture." The first installment featured the work of award-winning photographer Takagi (b. 1985). Transmuting sections of digital print images into solid objects, or painting with oil on the prints to alter the images, Takagi seems to be breaking out of the confines of conventional photography with growing gusto.

Toshiyuki Yamagishi: White Bible - Conveying the Word

30 April - 7 May 2017

Gallery Shop Mizu To Ki
(Tokyo)

Yamagishi says this installation was inspired by his visit one Christmas 12 years ago to a church where he heard a blind pastor intone "In the beginning was the Word" from a braille Bible. He began studying braille and the Bible, and visited churches and historical sites related to Japan's persecuted Kirishitan community in the Goto Archipelago. Declaring an interest in art born of imagery extrapolated from minimal information, Yamagishi has created works that reference braille and the Bible through the medium of that blind pastor.

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