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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.
1 March 2012
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Kunihiko Takaoka: Icons
14 January - 25 March 2012
Machida Citizen's Literary Hall "Kotoba Land"
(Tokyo)
Photographer Takaoka's show at Kotoba (Word) Land consists of some 90 portraits of novelists, poets, lyricists and dramatists. The images are divided into three categories: "portrait" features black-and-white close-ups of the subjects' faces; "image" shows them in informal dress; and "studio" captures the writers in their workplaces. Kotoba Land, incidentally, was originally built to house the collection of Shusaku Endo (1923-96) paraphernalia donated by the family of the renowned author to his adopted hometown of Machida.

Fuyuko Matsui: Becoming Friends with All the Children in the World
17 December 2011 - 18 March 2012
Yokohama Museum of Art
(Kanagawa)
As a young artist skillfully employing Nihonga techniques to paint works that lean to the morbid and grotesque, Matsui is enjoying a bit of star treatment these days. Unfortunately there is not much that could be termed novel or contemporary in the work here, in what is touted as her first large-scale solo show at a museum. Memento mori has been a favorite theme since time immemorial, ero-guro seems as if it has been around almost as long, and a more riveting display of cadaver art can be found at Florence's La Specola. That said, the layout and curation of the exhibition are a pleasure in themselves. The title piece is Matsui's graduation work, and generous attention is paid to how it was created, making this the sort of retrospective normally reserved for masters in their dotage.
Go Hasegawa: Study in Real
14 January - 24 March 2012
TOTO Gallery MA
(Tokyo)
Hasegawa's architectural works exude confidence and resolve, as does the layout of this exhibition, which displays models of several projects at varying scales. Of particular interest is a bell tower constructed outside the venue which will be moved to the grounds of a nursery school in the tsunami-devastated town of Ishinomaki once the show is over. Unlike most architecture exhibitions, where the models on display are discarded afterward, this "recycling" of an actual structure for worthwhile purposes is a refreshing novelty.
NODA Hiroji 1981-2011

18 January - 2 April 2012
The National Art Center, Tokyo
(Tokyo)
Its title years referring to the artist's career, not his entire lifespan, the show introduces 140 works -- every one of them a revelation -- representing three decades of output by Noda (b. 1952). Early relief-like pieces inspired by Jasper Johns and his ilk morphed at some point into flat-plane works reminiscent of the Rinpa school of traditional folding-screen art. Noda's figurative and symbolic imagery may appear dated to eyes overly familiar with postmodernist tropes, but this survey effectively places such elements in the context of an oeuvre that has never stopped evolving.
Reika Nakayama: Sleeping diary -- to paradise

21 January - 10 March 2012
Mori Yu Gallery Kyoto
(Kyoto)
In this solo show of new paintings by Nakayama, winner of last year's VOCA Award, her past motifs of birds, animals and plants are supplemented by human figures -- angels and other celestial messengers of the sort one sees in church or temple sculptures and religious paintings. Nakayama's work, which combines acrylic, pencil, and collage, is also slated for inclusion in the "New Contemporaries" exhibition at Gallery @KCUA, Kyoto City University of Arts, from March 3 to 25.
Takashi Homma: Mushrooms from the Forest 2011

17 December 2011 - 19 February 2012
blind gallery
(Tokyo)
The Japanese title of the show, which literally translates to "Children of that Forest," sounds like a reference to Homma's first breakthrough photo collection, Tokyo Children (published in 2001 by Little More), which sensitively portrayed the fragile presence of children living in the metropolis in the wake of Japan's economic collapse. Homma's approach to the "children" in this series -- mushrooms in the irradiated forests of Fukushima -- is strikingly reminiscent of the earlier series. Shot against a white background, with soil, dead leaves, and even slugs still clinging to them, the fungi are posed casually, yet with loving attention to detail.
Geidai Sentan 2012

7 - 15 January 2012
BankART Studio NYK
(Kanagawa)
Usually, the annual graduation exhibition of the Inter Media Art Department at Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) yields up at least one or two works that, if not exactly masterpieces, defy norms or expectations in a way that sticks in the mind. That no such works were in evidence this year suggests that perhaps the ranks of contemporary-art departments are being filled with honor students who are adept at playing by the rules of the genre -- a victory of sorts for the avant-garde? Or it may simply mean that the ever-widening gap in years between art school graduates and this reviewer has finally grown unbridgeable. The reviewer, for one, hopes that the lack of emotional resonance was no more than a side effect of his New Year hangover.

three

6 - 29 January 2012
Shiseido Gallery
(Tokyo)
First in the "shiseido art egg" series introducing young artists and art groups, the three-person unit aptly named "three" hails from Fukushima. Their exhibition consists of two large installations. One is an undulating wall made of 50,000 tiny soy sauce containers. The other consists of some 7,000 candies and gumdrops suspended by threads from the ceiling of the main gallery and forming the contours of a house. The group's use of vast quantities of everyday items to take a poppish poke at contemporary society is entertaining enough, but what gives the latter piece special charm is a hidden riddle that will bring joy to any art geek.

Lost & Found: Family Photos Swept by 3.11 East Japan Tsunami

11 January - 11 February 2012
AKAAKA
(Tokyo)
The town of Yamamoto in southern Miyagi Prefecture was half-inundated by the March 11 tsunami. Very soon after the disaster, Project Salvage Memory was launched by volunteers who collected the photographs that rescue and cleanup parties had found in the muck and debris, washed them, digitized them, and sought to return them to their owners. Out of the tens of thousands of salvaged photos, some 12,000 have been returned so far. This exhibition displays a sampling, in conditions ranging from nearly pristine to unrecognizable, of those that remain unclaimed. The show moves on to Los Angeles in March, and Paris after that.
Sachie Horigome
14 - 28 January 2012
Gallery Tsubaki
(Tokyo)
Horigome paints soft-focus oils of colored glass bottles, but these are not ordinary still lifes. Truncating, streamlining, or otherwise altering the shapes of the vessels, the artist creates forms that verge on the abstract. They remind one a bit of Giorgio Morandi's work, but by applying many layers of paint, Horigome achieves her own uniquely luminous transparency, one that testifies to the magic of oil paint.
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