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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.

15 May 2015

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Fuji Paradigms: Visions of Mt. Fuji

17 January - 5 July 2015

Izu Photo Museum
(Shizuoka)

For a museum located at the foot of the iconic peak, an exhibition devoted to Mt. Fuji sounds inevitable. The Izu Photo Museum has lived up to its mandate with a thoroughgoing show divided into two parts. The first examines how images of the mountain became fixed in the public imagination with the advent of photography in Japan at the end of the Shogunate, in the mid-19th century. The second introduces photos and films by Masanao Abe, a resident of nearby Gotenba who devoted years to taking fixed-point, time-lapse photos of cloud formations over Fuji from his own Cloud and Air Current Research Laboratory.

Science Courses Begin! Early Science Education as Seen in the Kyoto University Collection

5 March - 23 May 2015

LIXIL Gallery
(Tokyo)

An edifying presentation that illuminates the development of science education in Japan during the Meiji era (1868-1912). On display are some 100 items ranging from physics lab equipment and wall charts to biological and geological models and specimens. Culled from the collections of the Kyoto University Museum and the university's Yoshida-South Library, the exhibits offer a good overview of the modernization process as it evolved in the Japanese classroom.

Pleasant Form for Everyone: Universal Design Exhibition 2015 from Japan

3 March - 24 May 2015

Printing Museum, Tokyo
(Tokyo)

"Universal Design" refers to designs -- of products, buildings, spaces -- that are readily accessible to all, young or old, male or female. This show starts off with an exhibit comparing UD-friendly and -unfriendly designs, demonstrating, for example, how hard it is for left-handers to use conventional playing cards. UD is certainly a concept that merits particular attention in Tokyo as the city gears up for the 2020 Olympics.

Kishio Suga

2 November 2014 - 24 March 2015

The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum
(Shizuoka)

Much of this show consisted of reconstructions of work Suga (b. 1944) previously displayed at the Venice Biennale or the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. But the vaunted Mono-ha veteran took good advantage of the unique interior and exterior spaces of the Vangi, making it seem as if he had created the installations just for this place.

PARASOPHIA: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture

7 March - 10 May 2015

Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, The Museum of Kyoto, others
(Kyoto)

This was the debut of an ambitious contemporary art event that sprawled across seven venues in the ancient capital. Some 40 artists from Japan and abroad participated, among them Emiko Kasahara, Yasumasa Morimura, Koki Tanaka, Cai Guo-Qiang, Pipilotti Rist, and Danh Vo. Seeking to distinguish itself from the regional artfests that are so in vogue these days, the festival announced no defining theme, instead encouraging the artists to autonomously develop new works on-site over the past year or so.

Really Realistic Reality: Artists of Wakayama and Kansai

14 March - 10 May 2015

The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama
(Wakayama)

The five artists featured here (Aya Ito, Yohei Okubo, Ichiro Okada, Kumpei, and Yutaka Koyanagi) were all born in the 70s or 80s and hail from Wakayama or make their home in the surrounding Kansai region. Using diverse methods and materials, all of them create works that give form to polarities: the genuine vs. the fake, the ordinary vs. the extraordinary, micro vs. macro, reality vs. delusion.

Great Fake Exposition: Cultural History of Forgery and Imitation

10 March - 6 May 2015

National Museum of Japanese History
(Chiba)

Fake sumi paintings by Sesshu, fake letters by the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, fake mermaid mummies, fake money . . . a tour of this exhaustive display of fakery does help draw a clear distinction between the false and the genuine. Yet viewing objects that, however counterfeit, once reinforced the religious faith of the devout, for example, also makes one realize that the human heart is truly a multilayered thing.

Drawing the Capital: The Era of Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu

1 March - 12 April 2015

The Museum of Kyoto
(Kyoto)

The early 16th century saw the advent of a genre of large screen paintings, the rakuchu-rakugai-zu ("scenes in and around the capital"), that portrayed daily life in Kyoto as well as the imperial seat's numerous temples, castles, palaces and other landmarks. This show brought together a number of such works, offering a delightful cornucopia of images ranging from Gion Festival floats to people wining and dining on the banks of the Kamo River to cherries blooming at Kiyomizu Temple.

APPLE+ Learning to Design, Designing to Learn: Ken Miki

5 - 31 March 2015

ginza graphic gallery (ggg)
(Tokyo)

Designer Ken Miki is also a professor at Osaka University of Arts, where he gave his first-year students the homework assignment of "apple." We may be familiar with the apple as a concept, but how well do we know it in "real" terms? The assignment was to observe an apple, draw it, and finally, eat it; the resulting exhibition serves as one model for design education.

Fukumi Shimura: Retracing Her Roots

17 January - 15 March 2015

Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art
(Kyoto)

Textile artist and Living National Treasure Shimura is still active at 90; this show reviewed her creative output of the last 60 years, displaying some 90 items, including referential works by members of the Mingei folk-art movement who served as her mentors. What is most striking is the vibrancy of her colors, the way they blend and bleed into one another, and their overall composition, forming a harmonious whole that captures and holds the eye.

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