artscape Japan


	HOME > PICKS

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.

3 August 2015

| 1 | 2 |

Aki Fueda: Animaless Zoo Project Inokashira

9 June - 8 August 2015

un petit GARAGE
(Tokyo)

Fueda likes to paint animals, a predilection she says she picked up from frequent childhood trips to Inokashira Park Zoo in Musashino, where she grew up. A favorite subject is the zoo's venerable elephant Hanako, whose portrait features prominently in the current show. The detail with which Fueda delineates the texture of the pachyderm's flesh contrasts with her approach to the background scenery. Her love of animals is tangible in every work.

Knowing Taiwan through Old Photographs: Nostalgic Scenes and People's Lives in Taiwan 1930s-1970s

13 June - 12 August 2015

The Taiwan Cultural Center
(Tokyo)

A retrospective of photography in Taiwan over five decades spanning the war, this covers the highlights of that period -- from the advent of commercial photography in the 1930s to the 1940s, dominated by a trio of photographers dubbed The Three Musketeers; the 1950s, a time of confrontation between realists and salon photographers; and the emergence from the 1960s on of young photographers who challenged traditional assumptions about their craft.

No Museum, No Life? -- Art-Museum Encyclopedia to Come

16 June - 13 September 2015

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
(Tokyo)

Celebrating the National Museum of Art's 15th anniversary, this show introduces works from the collections of all five member institutions: the host museum, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, The National Museum of Western Art, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, and The National Art Center, Tokyo. Arranged under 36 topics from A to Z, the presentation is indeed encyclopedic, and provides some fascinating insights into the museums themselves.

Masahisa Fukase: The Incurable Egoist

29 May - 14 August 2015

Diesel Art Gallery
(Tokyo)

The famously introspective photographer Fukase died in 2012 at age 78, but he had already been incapacitated by a brain injury for the last 20 years of his life. This is the first exhibition of his work by the Masahisa Fukase Archives, launched to look after his legacy. The 82 pieces on display include not only his best-known images, but many that have never been on public view before.

Cai Guo-Qiang: There and Back Again

11 July - 18 October 2015

Yokohama Museum of Art
(Kanagawa)

Prior to this solo show by the Chinese-born, New York-based artist (he also lived in Japan for nine years), Cai produced a public work-in-progress that made use of gunpowder, filling the museum with smoke and attracting considerable media attention. The finished work is now on display in the museum's entrance foyer.

Manga * Anime * Games from Japan

24 June - 31 August 2015

The National Art Center, Tokyo
(Tokyo)

Osamu Tezuka, the "god" of postwar manga and anime, died in 1989. This show picks up where he left off, looking at developments in Japanese manga, anime, and games during the quarter-century since his passing. Thus it also serves as a history of the subculture of the Heisei era, which began that same year with the enthronement of the current emperor.

Toyo Ito: Changing Lifestyles -- Making Omishima Japan's Favorite Residential Island

4 June - 22 August 2015

LIXIL Gallery
(Tokyo)

This exhibition proposes the Seto Inland Sea island of Omishima, home of the Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture and several other museums, as a model for lifestyles of the future.

The Road to Modernism: Constructivist Expression in the Photography Journal "Hakuyo"

1 - 13 June 2015

Galerie Omotesando
(Tokyo)

Hakuyo was the journal of the Nihon Koga Geijutsu Kyokai (Japan Photographic Art Association), founded in 1922 by Kobe-based photographer Hakuyo Fuchikami. In the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Fuchikami and his acolytes shifted dramatically from conventional landscapes to an approach that was labeled "constructivist." On display are collotype-printed pages from the magazine, cut out and framed as they are.

Tomoko Hisamatsu: "eudaemonics of artist!"

29 May - 14 June 2015

Roppongi Hills A/D Gallery
(Tokyo)

Artists are not always the happiest of folks, and indeed we tend to believe that one has to be miserable to achieve creative greatness. This show responds to that trope with the theme of "eudaemonics" (the art of happiness) as it applies to artists. With her decidedly cheerful work, acrylic painter Hisamatsu is garnering attention rare these days for someone coming out of the Nihonga tradition.

Sarah Fujiwara: La vie en rose Phosphorescences

22 May - 20 June 2015

Emon Photo Gallery
(Tokyo)

Japan-born, France-based photographer Fujiwara takes her installation title from the famous tune by chanteuse Edith Piaf (1915-63). Printing her close-ups of roses on transparent sheets or on fabric hung from the ceiling, or reflecting them onto aluminum panels, she employs diverse strategies to envelop the viewer in a veritable cosmos of roses.

| 1 | 2 |