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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering short reviews of exhibitions at museums and galleries in recent weeks, with an emphasis on contemporary art by young artists. |
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| Rune Naito: Forever Romantic |
| 31 January - 17 February 2008 |
Museum Eki Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| This show features some 1,000 works by pioneering illustrator, doll artist and interior designer Rune Naito (1932-2007), including his first edition prints and illustrations for Barazoku (Rose Tribe), Japan's first magazine for gay men. Naito's colorful and whimsical style paved the way for the now-ubiquitous "kawaii" (cute) style. |
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| Kae Oyanagi: Paintings and Videos |
| 28 January - 2 February 2008 |
Ami & Kanoko
(Osaka) |
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| Oyanagi is known for her abstract works in crayon and water pen as well as videos that employ these paintings as raw material. She also likes to scatter objects and cushions of artificial turf around the exhibition space. This show features flat panel paintings suspended from strings, adding a sense of depth to the installation. |
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Toshiko Okanoue: Metamorphoses |
| 29 January - 23 February 2008 |
The Third Gallery Aya
(Osaka) |
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Okanoue became famous for her surrealist photo collages in the 1950s, but then dropped out of sight for several decades. A portfolio of her past work as well as scanned reproductions and silkscreen prints are featured here in her first solo show since 2002.
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| Akira Yanagisawa |
| 28 January - 16 February 2008 |
Gallery Zero
(Osaka)
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| Snaking lines and dot patterns in a palette of white, gray and black define Yanagisawa's paintings. Six works consist of layered arrangements of fir tree silhouettes: variations on the same motif, realized through the ingenious use of stencils atop a computer-generated outline. |
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| Yasushi Ebihara: "Pause" |
| 1 - 29 February 2008 |
eN arts
(Kyoto) |
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| This series of paintings depicts images of female Hollywood stars of yesteryear, all taken from videos on pause. The video "noise" distrupting the images effectively destroys the glamorous aura of the silver screen, enveloping the entire exhibit in a nihilistic mood. |
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| Ichiro Okada: air-condition |
| 2 - 24 February 2008 |
Pantaloon
(Osaka) |
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| Okada has created original aural works by mixing the sounds of air conditioners recorded at 40 locations around the Kansai region. These accompany an installation of three minimalist structures composed of stepladders, chairs, toolboxes and so on found in the gallery storeroom. The artist says he is trying to express through other media the metamorphosis he experiences of the surrounding environment triggered by the sound of air conditioners. |
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| Goh Murahigashi Solo Exhibition: Otochan |
| 6 - 17 February 2008 |
iTohen
(Osaka) |
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| Kansai-based photographer Murahigashi has recently devoted himself to photographing his pet lovebird Otochan. This show features some 100 exquisitely composed prints of the bird, highlighting its delicate green and peach coloring against subdued monochromatic backgrounds. |
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| Kohei Nawa: TORSO |
| 9 February - 8 March 2008 |
Nomart Contemporary Art
(Osaka) |
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| Nawa produces beautiful forms by illuminating huge, bizarrely-shaped sculptures of polyurethane foam with sodium lamps. Another room in the gallery contains flat panel works that appear to be drawings created by silkscreen techniques. Multi-layered images composed of dots of different sizes appear in two styles, one of regular patterns, the other more intricate and complex. |
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| Junko Yada: Commemorative Photographs |
| 11 - 24 February 2008 |
Guild Gallery
(Osaka) |
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| Yada took these photos of people in places where they had once been photographed in the past: a brother and sister posing in front of their home, a mother and child standing by the gate of a nursery school attended long ago, an elderly couple sitting formally at their tokonoma alcove. The images are accompanied by texts about the subjects' memories of the time when the earlier picture was taken. |
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| Keizo Tawa: Recent Works |
| 28 January - 16 February 2008 |
Hino Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Tawa creates his sculptures by repeatedly hammering a block of iron, covering the surface with wave patterns. Some are engraved with shallow, delicate patterns, others with deeper, rougher ones. These works not only bring out the texture of the iron's surface but also evoke the harsh physical labor involved in striking it over and over. |
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