 |
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: Most of Japan's museums and galleries have reopened, but conditions and anti-coronavirus precautions vary. If you are planning a visit, please check the venue's website beforehand. |
|
|
|
1 December 2020 |
 |
| 1 | 2 | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Fabien Prioville Dance Company: Rendez-Vous Otsuka South & North |
| 17 October - 12 November 2020 |
Hoshino Resorts OMO5 Tokyo Otsuka / TRAM-PAL Otsuka
(Tokyo) |
|
| Germany-based Prioville has choreographed site-specific versions of Rendez-Vous for five different dance festivals worldwide. These Tokyo performances took place at venues on the north and south sides of Otsuka Station. Audience members sitting in cafés facing each site donned VR headsets to watch a prerecorded video, shot with a 360-degree camera, in which four dancers attired in white gave a five-minute performance in the same location (deserted at the time). The experience was much like having a daydream in 3D.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Emban-ni-Noru-Ha: Chasing Waterfalls |
| 23 October - 2 November 2020 |
| Online |
|
| Described as a "year-long project that aims to rediscover the meaning of drama in an age of fragmentation," this is an online production by a troupe whose name literally translates as "'Getting on the flying saucer'-ists." What makes it unique is that the "performance" is composed of countless voices assembled online. The group set up a special site with a "Recording" corner via which anyone could participate. Scriptwriter-director Kageyama Kisyodai edited the voices people submitted into a script and joined forces with videographer Tomoyuki Eguchi and composer AOTQ to create the online presentation. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Under 35 Architects Exhibition 2020 |
| 16 - 26 October 2020 |
Umekita Ship Hall / Umekita Plaza
(Osaka) |
|
| In its 11th iteration this year, the annual exhibition boasted more variation than usual, triggering such word associations as complex, diverse, rural, indigenous, traditional, African, even wild. Featured were works by seven architectural units: Koki Akiyoshi (last year's gold medal winner), Sayaka Matsui, Takayuki Kuzushima, Suzuko Yamada, Toru Wada, 1-1 Architects (Yuki Kamiya + Shoichi Ishikawa), and Tsubame Architects (Takuto Sando + Motoo Chiba + Himari Saikawa).
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Satoshi Ago: Penthesileia |
| 17 - 26 October 2020 |
Theatre E9 Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
|
| The German playwright Heinrich von Kleist's Penthesileia (1808) tells the tragic tale of the love-hate relationship between the Greek hero Achilles and the titular queen of the Amazons, set against the backdrop of the Trojan War. Theatre E9 artistic director Ago's production is not a faithful rendering of the original script, but rather a distillation of its essence in a musical performance that adds voices and percussion to physically expressive dance and evocative stage design.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Etsuko Kasagi: My Mother, the Stranger |
| 8 - 25 October 2020 |
Communication Gallery Fugensha
(Tokyo) |
|
| Last year, photographic artist Kasagi received the 29th Tadahiko Hayashi Award for the titular collection (published by Creo). Consisting of 13 large prints, this show comprised a representative selection of works from that series. The concept was Kasagi's insertion of her own image juxtaposed with or in place of her mother's in photographs taken in the course of the family's migration to Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and back to Japan. The work is interesting not only for Kasagi's skillful manipulation of digital technology to create these collages, but also for the powerful sentiment it conveys -- a desire to reunite with one's deceased parent across space and time. |
|
|
|
|
| Chieko Shiraishi: Shikawatari (Deer Crossing) |
| 5 - 10 October 2020 |
Gallery Kobo
(Tokyo) |
|
| Held in tandem with publication of the photo collection by the same name, this solo exhibition testified to Shiraishi's refined aesthetic sensibilities in her compositional use of space and the gray-tone emphasis of her monochrome prints. Exercising the perfect degree of tone control on the print paper, she eloquently expresses the silence of Hokkaido's vast grasslands in winter and the stoic presence of the deer who dwell there. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
KYOTOGRAPHIE 2020 |
19 September - 18 October 2020 |
Itoyu Machiya, etc.
(Kyoto) |
|
| This autumn marked the eighth installment of Kyoto's annual international photography festival. Two artists who made especially effective use of the temples and old machiya townhouses that serve as the event's venues were Atsushi Fukushima and Marjan Teeuwen. Fukushima's photographs of elderly recipients of the meals he delivers door-to-door shine a powerful light from an unusual angle on issues confronting contemporary Japanese society. Teeuwen took over two rooms in a machiya to create a new space out of walls, pillars, beams and stairs from a dismantled house in her Destroyed House Kyoto installation. Both exhibits will be on view at Itoyu Machiya from 22 to 24 January and 11 to 14 February 2021. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Dumb Type Performance "2020" Film Screening |
| 16 - 18 October 2020 |
ROHM Theatre Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
|
| A film of Dumb Type's 2020 -- the avant-garde troupe's first new work in 18 years -- was screened in the same hall in which it was recorded earlier sans audience. The opening scene, in which a light on a pendulum swings back and forth in darkness, suggests continuity with their previous production, 2002's Voyage. A dance sequence by a solitary female performer is followed by a storm of electronic sound and white light that subsides, leaving only a large rectangular hole in the middle of the stage. It is around this hole that the main narrative unfolds, hinting at the liberation of the protagonist as a woman and an individual from a digitized assault by male oppression, aggression, and anonymity. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Manuscripts from the Naito Collection III: The Flower of Illumination - Chants to Heaven, Divine Reason |
| 8 September - 18 October 2020 |
The National Museum of Western Art
(Tokyo) |
|
| The third and final presentation of illuminated manuscripts donated to the museum in 2016 by the medical scientist Hiroshi Naito (b. 1932). This one featured leaves from liturgical music manuscripts and those from books of canon law (decrees related to the management of the Church and the lives of the faithful). Most medieval manuscripts are sold leaf by leaf due to the prohibitive purchase price of entire books. Particularly eye-catching were the ornate initial letters, the distinctive musical notation of the time, and the margins filled with lavishly colored illustrations -- or in the case of the legal texts, densely written annotations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
