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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.
2 May 2011
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The Dawn of Japanese Photography: Shikoku district, Kyushu district & Okinawa prefecture
8 March - 8 May 2011
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Tokyo)
The third in a series, this show features some of the earliest photographs taken in Japan in the mid-1800s, before the end of the Shogunate. Following previous installments that focused on the Kanto and Chubu/Kinki/Chugoku regions, the current one assembles original and duplicate prints from western Japan. Surveys sent out to around 2,200 museums, libraries and other institutions in Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa yielded dozens of originals that had previously been undiscovered or overlooked. Among the most intriguing are the three "Baudin Albums" of photos collected by the Bauduin brothers in Nagasaki (Anthonius taught at Nagasaki Hospital and Alphonse was the Dutch consul there).

Masterpieces of Japanese Pictorial Photography
8 March - 8 May 2011
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Tokyo)
Some 120 of the most celebrated images shot by Japanese photographers from the late 1800s through the 1930s are combined with an equally impressive collection of related illustrations and documents. Of particular interest are works by members of the "expressionist" school championed by Kenkichi Nakajima following the devastating Kanto Earthquake of 1923. These artists (Sakae Tamura, Jiro Takao, Teiko Shiotani, Shin Sato, Senka Honda, Shotaro Ozeki) were fond of radically retouching their prints with oil, pencil, paint and other substances, often to the point of unrecognizability -- with fascinating results.
Nagasawa Rosetsu: The Fanciful Painter
12 March - 5 June 2011
Miho Museum
(Shiga)
This major retrospective offers some 110 works by Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-99). A student of the renowned late Edo Period painter Maruyama Okyo (1733-95), Rosetsu gradually weaned himself from his teacher's style, moving into what was then radical territory with unconventional techniques, variegated subject matter, and irreverent humor. The show bears ample witness to the curiosity, creative drive, and playful outlook that infuse all of Rosetsu's work. Particularly eye-catching are his large screen paintings, at once meticulous and dynamic, of tigers, elephants and other exotic animals.
Kaza Ana / Air Hole: Another Form of Conceptualism from Asia

8 March - 5 June 2011
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
(Osaka)
Eight artists and art units from China, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere (The Play, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Dinh Q. Le, Fumio Tachibana, Shimabuku, Qiu Zhijie, Yuki Kimura, contact Gonzo) offer a decidedly East Asian take on conceptual art. One installation that transcends whimsy or parody and borders on the anthropological is Araya's video series of Thai villagers viewing and commenting on impressionist paintings by Renoir, Manet, and the like. The museum explains the show title thusly: "Kaza-ana (air hole) refers to a crack through which wind blows. Artists seek out and expand the fissures in rules, domains and objects. Conceptualism dismantles old frames of reference and invites fresh breezes to blow through them."
Atsuhiko Misawa: Meet The Animals! - Homeroom

10 April - 22 May 2011
Kyoto Art Center
(Kyoto)
This is sculptor Misawa's first exhibition in his hometown of Kyoto. His lifesize sculptures of animals are noteworthy not only for their substantiality and texture, but for a humorous and friendly demeanor that arouses a sense of intimacy in viewers, the sort of feeling one has toward a beloved pet. Moreover, the artist does a masterful job of arranging his creatures in ways that interact playfully with an exhibition space that was once an elementary school, inviting visitors not only to view, but to "meet the animals."
Kodai Nakahara: paintings

23 April - 28 May 2011
Gallery Nomart
(Tokyo)
Throughout his career, Nakahara (b.1961) has expressed himself through every available medium, it seems: sculpture, drawing, film, performance, installations. An influential fixture on Japan's art scene since the nineties, he has sought to expand the palette of contemporary artistic expression through substitutions and juxtapositions of images and materials. In this solo show he employs the medium of painting to turn conventional wisdom on its head.
Prism Lag: Aiko Tezuka with Monet & Signac

17 March - 12 June 2011
Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art
(Kyoto)
This show brings together a number of paintings by Monet and Signac from the museum's collection with recent works by London-based Japanese artist Tezuka. The exhibition's "keyword" is "iridescence" -- ostensibly applied to the Impressionists in their hunt for true colors as reflected by light in the human eye, as well as to Tezuka's work, in which tangles of embroidery threads are reconfigured into new creations, an impressionistic approach of a different sort.

Shigeki Nakano + Frankens: The Matchmaker

25 February - 6 March 2011
ZA-KOENJI Public Theatre
(Tokyo)
The Shigeki Nakano + Frankens theater company specializes in plays translated from other languages. Recently they produced Thornton Wilder's classic comedy The Matchmaker at Za-Koenji, a contemporary performing arts complex in western Tokyo. The troupe effectively utilizes wordplay, some of it based on deliberate mistranslation, to set up a tumbling rhythm to the dialogue and elicit plenty of laughs. The denouement, with its wacky pastiche of missing wallets, false identities and cross-dressing, is part slapstick, part cultural anthropology.

Hirayama Ikuo and the Preservation of Buddhist Heritage

18 January - 6 March 2011
Tokyo National Museum
(Tokyo)
Famed for his landscapes of central Asian deserts along the Silk Road, Nihonga painter Hirayama (1930-2009) dedicated his life to the preservation of Buddhist statuary, murals and other cultural treasures in that part of the world. This show displays works of art from places Hirayama visited in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Western China, and Cambodia alongside his own work. A highlight is the 37-meter long Daito Saiiki mural series depicting the introduction of Buddhism from India to China, a masterpiece that took Hirayama 20 years to complete for the Yakushiji temple in Nara.
The 14th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art
5 February - 3 April 2011
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
(Kanagawa)
Named after the ubiquitous icon of the Japanese avant-garde, this year's TARO Awards bestowed the late master's blessings on a variety of works displayed in this annual show (the 13th) at the eponymous museum. The Taro Okamoto Award went to Orta's massive shrine of straw, bamboo and earth, and the Toshiko Okamoto award to Toshitaka Mochizuki's images of scattered female figures, all clothed in black, with black hair obscuring their faces. Special Award winners were Hiroko Takano's towering pile of wooden bookcases, Takahiro Ueda's particle accelerator-like object, Mikiko Kumazawa's paintings and Kentaro Morohashi's installation.
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