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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 31 May due to the Japanese government's latest emergency declaration to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. If you are planning a visit, please check the venue's website beforehand. |
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| Hiroko Koshino: Ex-Vision to the Future |
| 8 April - 20 June 2021 |
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
(Hyogo) |
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Before concepts like "fashion" and "design" took hold in Japan, Koshino was designing Western-style clothing that reflected her awareness of the power inherent in what we wear. This thorough retrospective of her career showcases the apparel introduced in her legendary collections, as well her parallel devotion to painting, which has influenced and inspired her fashion designs. Her collaborations with young artists speak to Koshino's unwaveringly future-oriented outlook, always keeping an eye on what's to come.
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| Pipilotti Rist: Your Eye Is My Island |
| 6 April - 13 June 2021 |
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| A retrospective covering the three-decade career of Switzerland-based contemporary artist Rist (b. 1962). From the museum's website: "The exhibition is made of some 40 works, dealing with themes such as the body, women, nature, and ecology. [It] encompasses everything from the artist's early short videos focusing on the female body and identity [to] a major work that was presented at the Venice Biennale; a recent large-scale video installation, which gently extols a symbiosis between nature and humans using state-of-the-art video techniques; a new work that incorporates pieces from the museum collection; and an outdoor work fashioned out of recycled materials." |
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| try try try: helmut schmid typography |
| 3 April - 10 July 2021 |
kyoto ddd gallery
(Kyoto) |
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| Austria-born typographer and graphic designer Schmid (1942-2018) first visited Japan in 1966, then settled in Osaka in 1977, where he carried on the traditions of postwar Swiss typography, particularly the teachings of his mentor Emil Ruder. He also taught design in Kobe and Seoul, and published the acclaimed book Typography Today. The exhibition takes an extensive look at the broad range of his work in this country, which included editorial design, product packaging, and brand identity.
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| Kuroda Taizo |
| 21 November 2020 - 25 July 2021 |
The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka
(Osaka) |
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| Kuroda (b. 1946) has earned global recognition for his works of white porcelain. After traveling to Paris and then to Canada, where he first encountered ceramic art in 1967, he returned to Japan and held his inaugural solo show in 1982. He has devoted himself to white porcelain since his first exhibit of work in that medium in 1992. Thin and elegant, with gently arcing wheel marks adorning their surface, Kuroda's vessels exude a delicate yet undeniable presence. Some 60 of his white porcelain works are on display here. |
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| Encounter - Infinite Variety of Faces |
| 20 March - 6 June 2021 |
Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art
(Kagawa) |
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| A gathering of works with the human face as their subject, by ten Japan artists of varying generations over the past century. The presentation is divided into three parts: "Me and You," "Faces and Relationships," and "Play with Faces." Observes the curator's note: "By means of faces we identify other people and communicate with them . . . Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, we each wear a mask and pass our days unable to see the other person's face well. Even in normal circumstances, however, how closely do we actually look at the other person's face?"
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Emi Shimamura: A Cat Is There |
18 - 29 March 2021 |
Olympus Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| The title notwithstanding, most of these photos show landscapes with nary a cat in sight. If the dubious viewer keeps looking, though, they will find a tiny cat figure somewhere on the fringes of the picture frame. The cats are fully immersed in their surroundings -- hidden in tree shadows, peeping out from under the eaves of a house, napping inside a box. The photographer's strategy successfully seduces us into poring over every shot from corner to corner. Not only that, as landscapes they bear up well under this scrutiny. |
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| Michiko Sato: Creative Snap |
| 1 - 28 March 2021 |
The Ginza Space
(Tokyo) |
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| Sato snaps scenes that just happen to come into her line of sight, yet somehow she transforms them into abstract compositions suggesting a world that is real yet unreal. She accomplishes this through painstaking attention to color, form, and texture. An acknowledged influence is the prewar photographer Roso Fukuhara (1892-1946), and like him Sato is drawn to corrugated-tin walls, which appear frequently in the images here and will no doubt continue to inspire her. |
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| Arts in the Age of the Airplane |
| 6 February - 11 April 2021 |
Yokosuka Museum of Art
(Kanagawa) |
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| As host to a huge U.S. Navy base, the port of Yokosuka is more readily associated with ships than airplanes. Still, a title that juxtaposes airplanes with art is a draw in itself. The show turned out to be big on prewar and wartime works, such as Kochiro Onchi's woodcut series Sensuality of Flight chronicling his experience in an aircraft, posters to drum up war funding, and illustrations featuring fighter planes from the avant-garde/nationalist magazine NIPPON. Still, it was not all paeans to modern technology and warfare; some balance was achieved with exhibits that touched on darker topics like air raids and anti-base demonstrations.
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| Genkyo Yokoo Tadanori |
| 15 January - 11 April 2021 |
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
(Aichi) |
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An impressive show just for the sheer number of works it brought together. All of Yokoo's numerous "periods" were represented -- boyhood drawings, his graphic designer heyday, collages, his massive waterfall-postcard collection, his Y-intersection paintings -- right up to his recent "With Corona" series, in which he inserts masks into past works. In the 1980s Yokoo the designer reinvented himself as a painter. However, unlike the French designer/artist Cassandre, who made a similar career change but ended up killing himself, Yokoo is blessed with a relentless creative urge and an indomitable optimism.
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