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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 February 2015 |
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| Dark Light: Traces of Akira Yoshimura |
| 2 - 7 December 2014 |
Gallery Le Deco
(Tokyo) |
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| Organized by friends of the experimental photographer who died at age 53 in 2012, this show took place in tandem with the posthumous publication by Ohsumi Shoten of Akira Yoshimura Works. The 78 prints were chosen by a committee consisting of publisher Naoto Ohsumi and photographers Masahiro Minato and Hiroyoshi Yamazaki. |
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| Hideo Kobayashi: Shield |
| 4 December 2014 - 31 January 2015 |
Emon Photo Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Kobayashi's work puts flawless technique in the service of a relentlessly metaphysical outlook, a combination rarely seen in the annals of Japanese photographic expression. He definitely deserves wider recognition. This reviewer looks forward to wherever his thirst for experimentation in the name of "transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary" takes him next. |
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| Ryuichi Ishikawa: The Grand Polyphony |
| 3 - 16 December 2014 |
Ginza Nikon Salon
(Tokyo) |
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| A boxer during his high-school years, Ishikawa went on to study avant-garde Butoh dance with Seiryu Shiba. Now the Okinawa native is a photographer, another undertaking whose physicality is well suited to the artist's. Sparked by the colorful chaos of life on his home island, these shots burn with vitality. |
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| The Tradition of Elegance in Japanese Applied Art: Designs Inspired by Classical Poems and Tales |
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28 October - 7 December 2014 |
Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts
(Osaka) |
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| Alluding to such literary sources as the Tale of Genji and Tales of Ise, these resplendent kimonos, ceramics, and lacquerworks reincarnate the sounds, rhythms, and imagery of the texts in their flowing motifs of flowers, birds, and water. Evincing a design sensibility at once playful and refined, as well as a fertile imagination, these objects offer a seductive glimpse into the hearts of the writers whose words inspired them. |
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| A Kaleidoscope of Tenjin |
| 9 December 2014 - 25 January 2015 |
The Shoto Museum of Art
(Tokyo) |
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| The legendary Heian-era scholar/poet/politician Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), a.k.a. Tenjin, the god of learning, has been depicted over the centuries in numerous paintings, woodcuts, and sculptures. This veritably kaleidoscopic show attempted to sum up the multiple facets of his larger-than-life persona. |
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| The Etcher: Kiyohara Keiko Retrospective Exhibition |
| 30 November - 14 December 2014 |
Hachioji Yume Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| Copperplate print artist Kiyohara was only 31 when she died in 1987, leaving behind a tiny but stunning oeuvre of finely detailed, phantasmagoric etchings. In her ten-year career she produced only 30 finished works. Commemorating the release of a book featuring those prints, the exhibition displayed them as well as poems and sketches, trial prints, production notes, and original plates -- and a bookshelf containing Kiyohara's library. |
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Tagasode Screens: The Kimono as Painting Theme |
13 November - 23 December 2014 |
Nezu Art Museum
(Tokyo) |
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| Several things draw us to the Edo-era genre of screens painted with images of women's kimono hanging on racks to air out. Tagasode literally means "whose sleeves?" -- and indeed it is the sleeves that are foregrounded, composing the designs of the screens as well as forming pictures within a picture. Not only that, but one can practically smell the perfume wafting from these colorful garments. |
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| Yoshiko Kamikura: Tamakiharu - A Father's Death |
| 12 December 2014 - 30 January 2015 |
Nadiff Gallery
(Tokyo) |
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| Like her previous collections Tamayura and Tamamono, photographer Kamikura's latest book, Tamakiharu, takes as its title a makurakotoba (poetic epithet) used to evoke "life" in traditional Japanese verse. Where the book touches on the deaths of several people close to Kamikura and includes Biblical references and copious text, this exhibition focused on a series of images that movingly chronicle the death of her own father. |
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| Shiko Munakata and Keisuke Serizawa |
| 6 September - 16 December 2014 |
The Japan Folk Crafts Museum, Osaka
(Osaka) |
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| Printmaker Munakata (1903-75) and dye artist Serizawa(1895-1984) were both active in the Mingei folk-arts movement, and both produced series of images of the Shaka Judaideshi, the ten major disciples of the Buddha Shakyamuni. With these as its centerpiece, the show brought together some 100 works by the two masters, while a concurrent exhibit showcased ceramists Shoji Hamada and Kanjiro Kawai, two other prominent Mingei figures. |
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