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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.
Note: Many museums in Japan are closed until further notice as a preventive measure against the spread of the coronavirus. Before visiting, please check with the museum. |
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| White on White - An experiment with white porcelain and words |
| 13 March - 5 July 2020 |
Atelier Muji Ginza
(Tokyo) |
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| A unique take on the art of white porcelain. There are many ways to interpret the significance of plain white porcelain in modern design, and this show chooses to do so through "words" -- in this case the avant-garde poetry of Katue Kitasono (1902-78), whose celebrated concrete poem "Monotonous Space" adorns the outer wall of the gallery. It's a refreshing context within which to view the spread of white tableware on display. |
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| Theater Commons Tokyo '20 |
| 27 February - 8 March 2020 |
Minato ward, Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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| Even as the coronavirus-dictated shutdown of public theatrical performances began to take hold, we were fortunate to make it to two works out of several by an international roster of playwrights at venues in central Tokyo. In Prometheus Bound, Meiro Koizumi utilized VR technology to plunge audience members into a virtual world of his creation, while Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere employed smartphones to stage their documentary piece Pleasant Island. Both merit evaluation as "post-corona" works that suggest alternate means of production at a time when the exit from lockdown still seems far off. |
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| SDL: Re-2020 |
| 8 March 2020 |
Sendai Mediatheque
(Miyagi) |
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| Sendai Design League (SDL) is an annual event that draws some 2,000 architecture students to Sendai to submit their graduation designs in a competition for "best in Japan." This year, as a precaution against the coronavirus, the usual exhibition of hundreds of models and drawings was cancelled. Instead, the works were displayed and their merits debated by jurors online. What was striking was the relaxed mood of the finalists as they fielded questions from the comfort of their own habitats. The success of this cyber-competition experiment may carry implications for the format of next year's SDL.
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| City Killer |
| 5 - 10 March 2020 |
Atelier Shunpusha
(Tokyo) |
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| Originally slated to run from 5 to 10 March 2020, this production by students in the Actors Course at the Film School of Tokyo ultimately took place in a no-audience format. Playwright and director Ryu Motohashi frequently employs the strategy of superposing two unrelated events on the same space-time frame. Here, he put the constraints on the production to advantage in an examination of how human beings coexist in the same world even as they see it from diverging perspectives. |
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| The Vision of Contemporary Art 2020 |
| 12 - 30 March 2020 |
Ueno Royal Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| In this year's iteration of the annual show, one standout was a work by Rui Mizuki, who applied white paint to a rough sandpaper-like surface, then printed symbol-like motifs on that. The backing was not really sandpaper but deck tape used on skateboards, the paint was the type applied to pavement, and the symbols were marks used by road construction workers. In one sense, it resembled a street painting peeled off the asphalt and set upright -- or, rather, as one viewer put it, "a painting converted into a street." |
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| Chiten: Crime and Punishment |
| 20 - 22 March 2020 |
Kyoto Art Theater Shunjuza Studio21
(Kyoto) |
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| In the Kyoto-based Chiten theatre company's version of Dostoevsky's classic, the script does a masterful job of raising issues about anonymity and mass surveillance against the backdrop of a deserted city street in 19th-century Russia. It also proved prophetic in its references to a terrifying epidemic breaking out in the nether regions of Asia. In the last scene a voice cries bleakly, "Is anybody there?" Nobody answers. Is it the silence of death following a process of culling according to the exclusion principle? Or the apocalyptic silence of cultural death brought on by the imposition of a plague-prompted lockdown? |
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| Theatre Sokudo: Landscapes, landscapes, and the scene (subtitles as the landscape) |
| 5 - 8 March 2020 |
| Online |
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(Kyoto) |
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| Unable to perform one of its works as scheduled due to the coronavirus crisis, Theatre Sokudo has created and posted a video piece in its stead that takes the original work's concepts (exploring the relationship between words and actors, utilizing silence, repetition, and subtitles) and applies them to footage shot on the streets of Kyoto. What makes this more than just a recording of a street performance is the insertion of "subtitles" that describe and appear to direct the actions of unwitting passersby. The device has the intrusive effect of framing all the behavior occurring on the street as part of a staged drama. |
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