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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. |
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2 September 2013 |
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| Natsuki Otake |
| 15 - 27 July 2013 |
Gallery b.Tokyo
(Tokyo) |
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| Otake uses batik dyeing techniques to create exaggerated representations of pop-idolesque young girls, far more glittering and gaudy than anything one sees in anime or manga. Her subjects' faces are wreathed in all manner of flowers, stars, jewels and other ornaments, with dazzling gradations of color that make the viewer dizzy. One gets the strong impression that what the artist is trying to say is not to be found in the actual images she has produced. |
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| Art Osaka 2013 |
| 20 - 21 July 2013 |
Hotel Granvia Osaka
(Osaka) |
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| The Kansai region's most prominent contemporary art fair boasted 52 participating galleries this year, including several from Korea. Special features included a group exhibit by members of the second generation of the Gutai art movement and a joint project by the host venue, Hotel Granvia Osaka, with students at the Kyoto City University of Arts -- all in all, an event immensely gratifying in its breadth and depth. |
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| Hiroshi Nagai: Summer Madness |
| 7 - 27 August 2013 |
DMO ARTS / digmeout Art & Diner
(Osaka) |
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| Eiichi Ohtaki's hit 1981 album A Long Vacation is legendary for, among other things, its cover art by Hiroshi Nagai. This big solo show gave viewers a chance to reappraise Nagai's idyllic scenes of turquoise swimming pools, white parasols, green palm trees, and, everywhere, endless blue skies. Now that we're well into the 21st century, these visions of summer as paradise take on a new poignancy . . . or maybe they just feel good to look at. |
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| Watanoha Smile Project |
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colissimo
(Hyogo)
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| Located in a former post office in Sasayama, Hyogo Prefecture, the colissimo gallery recently hosted a unique exhibition that is currently touring Japan. The Watanoha Smile Project is the brainchild of sculptor Tomo Inukai, who worked as a volunteer at Watanoha Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, just after that city was inundated by the tsunami of March 11, 2011. Inukai engaged the children who had been evacuated to the school in the creation of art out of the debris that had been washed onto the school grounds. This exhibition of their work was accompanied by workshops and other events. |
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| Hiroshi Nomura: Exdora, Ra, Ra, Ra, Ra . . . |
| 8 June - 14 July 2013 |
Poetic Scape
(Tokyo) |
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| Photographic artist Nomura's Exdora character is a teddy-bear-like figure similar in size and shape to the beloved anime character Doraemon. In this series he has superimposed human-scale Exdora silhouettes, often in pairs, upon Google Street View shots randomly selected from locations all over Japan. The Exdoras pop up in whimsical fashion at a building construction site or among the crowds outside a discount clothing outlet, casually transforming the spaces into which they have inserted themselves. |
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| Masatoshi Sakamoto: Tohoku |
| 10 - 23 June 2013 |
Sokyusha
(Tokyo) |
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| Sakamoto's photography is motivated by his conviction that the houses of the Tohoku region have a special beauty born of the sensibilities of their inhabitants and the rich yet harsh conditions of their environment. His stance appears to have been unaltered by the disaster of 2011. These images, at first glance dour and impassive, over time can be seen to brim with the passion of his embrace of the souls of the people of this region and the spirit of its land. |
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| Akiko Ao: "cut it, line it up, and stick them!" |
| 1 - 30 June 2013 |
Kagumachi Lab
(Osaka) |
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| Kagumachi ("Furniture Town") Lab is a unique facility that holds woodworking classes and repair and restoration workshops for those who wish to preserve their favorite furniture. Mosaic sculptor Ao brought part of her Hamamatsu studio with her, including the machine she uses to cut the wood pieces for her works, one of which she proceeded to create on-site. Participants in her workshop could be seen enjoying the leisurely process of mosaic production. |
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| Naoko Tamura: La forêt de Sologne |
| 6 - 23 June 2013 |
Nakanoshima Design Museum de sign de
(Osaka) |
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| Tamura presents a series of photographs depicting the daily lives of patients and staff at Clinique de La Borde, a psychiatric facility in the forested Sologne region of central France. In this "White Series," images of the patients and staff departing on bicycles for a picnic together are bleached out, accenting the isolation of the figures and provoking a feeling of unease in the viewer. One senses that the photographer is not finished with her work at La Borde and that there are more series to come. |
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| Aya Kametani: Ametsuchi no Kura |
| 5 -14 June 2013 |
Galerie Centennial
(Osaka) |
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| A miniature sheep whose back resembles a landscape . . . a hand in whose palm lies a bird feather . . . Kametani's objects highlight the diversity of shapes and textures possible with lacquer. Despite their small dimensions, her works evoke heavenly bodies, planetary orbits, the changes of the seasons. The gallery ambience augmented this impression, inspiring associations with various natural phenomena -- the night sky, soft breezes, the smell of rain and damp earth. The exhibition title roughly translates as "Storehouse of Heaven and Earth." |
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| Yumiko Morisue: Wandering along the road |
| 3 - 22 June 2013 |
Gallery Hosokawa
(Osaka) |
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| Morisue here applies embroidery to various unorthodox objects. The most astonishing is surely a loofah scrubbing sponge, to whose fibers she has sewn some 20 varieties of colored thread. Not only is her work painstakingly meticulous, but the colors transform the white sponge into a green object that looks like an actual loofah gourd. Part of the fun is imagining the process by which she created these pieces. |
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