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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.

2 November 2015

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This Is Amazing!

19 September - 3 November 2015

The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama
(Saitama)

Terumasa Ito has built some 800 "decoration trucks" out of paper over the past 30 years; Shiro gives form to her inability to communicate with others in paintings of young boys shunned or wounded by their peers; Moriya Kishaba covers sheets of paper with colored dots. There is indeed something amazing about the pursuit of meaning in meaninglessness as expressed through these "outsider" works.

Hiroshi Hamaya: Photographs 1930s-1960s

19 September - 15 November 2015

Setagaya Art Museum
(Tokyo)

Coming 16 years after Hamaya's death in 1999, this retrospective gives full play to the adventurous spirit the legendary photographer displayed in such series as "Modern Tokyo," "Snow Country," "Japan's Back Coast," and "Portraits of Scholars and Artists." His shots of life in Tokyo's Ginza and Asakusa entertainment districts in the 1930s influenced the "new photography" of the day with a style that he returned to on August 15, 1945, the day World War II ended, in "The Sun on the Day of Defeat."

Eating in Future: 3 Stories on Eating

3 September - 24 November 2015

LIXIL Gallery 2
(Tokyo)

Telling the titular three stories are Ryouichi Majima and Chelin, two artists who explore the relationship between food and art, and Akira Shinagawa, a specialist in "food consciousness theory" who joins them in a talk event. Majima offers such wacky creations as a huge fried-egg tabletop supported by four chicken legs and flanked by two chicken-shaped chairs. Chelin constructs towering skyscraper-like structures out of sugar and cream, portrayed here in a series of photographs that brilliantly juxtapose the two disparate scales of food and architecture.

Shunga

19 September - 23 December 2015

Eisei-Bunko Museum
(Tokyo)

This is the selfsame shunga (erotic ukiyo-e) exhibition that caused a sensation when it opened at the British Museum two years ago. Ironically, museums in Japan were loath to take this controversial project on, until the Eisei-Bunko Museum, whose board is chaired by former prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa, stepped forward. It is said that nearly every ukiyo-e artist of the Kamakura, Muromachi, and Edo periods (with the lone exception of the elusive Sharaku) dabbled in shunga, presumably in answer to insatiable demand.

Don't Follow the Wind: Non-Visitor Center

19 September - 3 November 2015

The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art
(Tokyo)

Chim Pom continues its intrepid exploration of post-meltdown Fukushima with this maverick concept: an exhibition about an exhibition that can't be seen. The collective of Tokyo-based provocateurs invited a dozen comrades from Japan and elsewhere -- among them Ai Weiwei, Eva and Franco Mattes, Ahmet Ogut, Meiro Koizumi, Kota Takeuchi, and Aiko Miyanaga -- to travel into the nuclear no-go zone and create installations at four abandoned sites (with the owners' permission). The catch, of course, is that due to the lingering high radiation levels, visitors will not be able to see these works firsthand for what could be anywhere from a dozen to 30 to 100 years -- no one knows for sure.

Tazuko Masuyama: After the End

26 August - 27 September 2015

Photographers' Gallery
(Tokyo)

Masuyama (1917-2006) is the famed "Camera Grandma" who snapped countless shots of her home village of Tokuyama in Gifu Prefecture before it was submerged under the reservoir behind a new dam. While Photographers' Gallery displayed a hefty selection of her oeuvre, the neighboring Kula Photo Gallery ran a heart-rending slide show of Masuyama's images of houses being torn down and bonfires burning household goods and farm tools while songs sung by the villagers (recorded by Masuyama) played in the background.

Tokuro Sakamoto: Hollowness

29 August - 26 September 2015

Gallery MoMo Projects
(Tokyo)

Sakamoto paints lakes, skies, clouds, and suburban-like landscapes in a flat, somewhat gray-tinged style that may take its cue from the Nihonga he studied in art school. Even where human vestiges -- buildings, phone poles, cities at night -- appear, there is no trace of actual people in his work. The overall effect is chilly yet captivating.

Digital X Fashion

11 July - 6 October 2015

Kobe Fashion Museum
(Hyogo)

This show introduces one pole on the spectrum of contemporary Japanese fashion through the creations of two cutting-edge designers. Kunihiko Morinaga of ANREALAGE translates the concepts of digital and other innovative technologies directly into fashion, while Tamae Hirokawa of SOMARTA constructs a new aesthetic by melding the latest digital technology with traditional techniques. Work like theirs is one reason Japanese fashion basks in the global limelight these days.

Tadanori Yokoo: Swimming Girls

26 August - 19 September 2015

Nantenshi Gallery
(Tokyo)

Pride of place is given to one of the Pink Girls paintings that debuted at Yokoo's first solo show, held in 1966 at the same gallery. Enthroned against a black backdrop on the back wall, it is flanked by canvases of "swimming girls" in various configurations -- alone, in pairs, intertwined. Though the works affect a playful, anything-goes style that thumbs its nose at conventional painting rules and wisdom, one also senses that Yokoo struggled mightily to put together these compositions.

Saburo Teshigawara: Water Angel

5 - 10 September 2015

Kanagawa Arts Theatre
(Kanagawa)

The stage design is devoid of objects, but the lighting does a wondrous job of carving space out of the darkness, where four dancers move at richly varied tempos, altering the flow of time and conjuring up a sensation of pouring water. The performance bodes well for the opera Teshigawara is slated to direct at Aichi Triennale 2016.

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