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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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| Spiral Independent Creators Festival |
| 2-5 May 2008 |
Spiral Hall
(Tokyo) |
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| This is the 9th year for SICF, a four-day show that offers young artists a chance at wider recognition by letting them occupy 50 small booths on the floor of Tokyo's Spiral Hall (in two alternating groups, for a total of 100 artists). A scrap of paper hangs on the wall of Takumi Ueda's booth with what appears to be a tiny doodle on it; closer examination reveals a surprisingly masterful drawing. |
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| Yuko Ikawa |
| 6 May - 11 June 2008 |
Art Space Niji
(Kyoto) |
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| Last year Ikawa made woodblock prints of contour lines transferred from maps of actual islands, then traced the lines by burning dots into them with sunlight through a magnifying glass. In these new works she has cut out the shorelines of southern Japanese islands from maps of a certain scale and rearranged them to create new, imaginary islands. |
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Akino Fuku Retrospective |
| 8 April - 11 May 2008 |
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| Celebrating the birth centenary of renowned Nihonga painter Fuku Akino (1908-2001), this show spans her entire career. Her Indian and African landscapes (she traveled and painted right up until her death at 93) are especially powerful; the vivid yellows of the earth and sun evoke both the spiritual intensity and harshness of these environments. |
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| Africa: The Land of Hope |
| 27 April - 29 May 2008 |
BankART 1929
(Kanagawa) |
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| Co-hosted by National Geographic Japan, this photo exhibition was held in tandem with the 4th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). Though the images focus on “people and their activities,” the viewer inevitably sees “nature” as an equally strong presence -- but that may simply reflect our own alienation from nature, and our subconscious perception of Africa as a place alien to us. |
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| Midori Mitamura: Art & Breakfast |
| 26 April - 18 May 2008 |
Higure 17-15 cas
(Tokyo) |
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| During this “residence installation” Mitamura lived in the studio, spending her mornings having breakfast with visitors and her afternoons creating works from materials at hand. The result was an installation that gave full expression to the artist's inner world. Her sweet-voiced rendition of “London Bridge Is Falling Down” was particularly memorable. |
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| Akiko Numajiri |
| 26 May - 1 June 2008 |
Toki Art Space
(Tokyo) |
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| Numajiri has covered the walls of this space with large clumps of trash she collected or had mailed to her from different cities and regions. One might expect these accumulations to reflect distinct regional identities, but one would be wrong: globalization appears to have made even garbage the same everywhere. |
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| Collection of Shanghai Art Museum 1979-2007 |
| 10 May - 8 June 2008 |
Japan-China Friendship Center
(Tokyo) |
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| Featuring 67 oils, watercolors, and prints, this exhibition includes works by some artists already known in Japan, but virtually none with the attributes of social criticism or self-mockery that are so prominent in Chinese art today. Perhaps this is inevitable since both the museum and the sponsor of the show are public entities. |
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| virtual/actual: Generation, Transformation, Fluidity |
| 20 May - 8 June 2008 |
Kyoto Art Center
(Kyoto) |
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| The five-man art unit SZ, formed in 2007, describes this as a “media art project on the theme of the virtual multiplicity of the living world,” in which the brain waves of the viewer are measured and converted via a complex algorithm into images. Wearing a headband-like measuring device, the viewer sits before a screen that displays landscapes or patterns that suggest cell division, galaxies and flowing water. As the brain responds by producing more beta-waves, the screen images change accordingly. |
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| Kyoto Art Map 2008 |
| 13-25 May 2008 |
Various galleries in Kyoto
(Kyoto) |
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| In its seventh year, this citywide event provides a cross-section of the contemporary Kyoto art scene. Highlights this year included Natsunosuke Mise's unique and powerful works at gallery neutron; an installation at Gallery Iteza by Boys and Girls Science Club that spit out alarming noises and flashes of light in the darkness; and Kota Miyanaga's landscape-like works in clay on lightboxes at Gallery Nakamura. |
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| Utopia of Images and Letters |
| 26 April - 8 June 2008 |
Urawa Art Museum
(Saitama) |
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| This show introduces the art magazines that proliferated in Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the magazines on display cannot be opened, however, one can only see their covers. The curators have tried to compensate by including works by the artists featured in those hidden pages, but the result is not much different from other exhibitions of modern Japanese art. |
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