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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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3 September 2018 |
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| Tomoaki Ishihara: 34 Light Years |
| 14 July - 12 August 2018 |
MEM
(Tokyo) |
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| In the 1980s, after graduating from Kyoto City University of Arts, Ishihara (b. 1959) began making a name for himself with three-dimensional works, notably his nude self-portrait photos printed onto spindle-like canvases, spirals and other irregular shapes. The self-portraits, he says, represent "a single process repeating the steps of turning an image into a body, the body into an image, and the image into an object." |
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| Fumi Arai: Painting Palette |
| 5 - 17 June 2018 |
Gallery Fu
(Kanagawa) |
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| Arai casts a gimlet eye on everyday objects we tend to overlook, eliciting from them discomfiting aspects that she scrupulously commits to canvas. In the titular series shown at this Yokohama gallery, each work portrays the very palette used to paint it. Consequently, both the palette and its painted image change in parallel, but with a slight time lapse -- the painting is never really finished. It's a fascinating effect that might be described as tautological art. |
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| Akakilike: Family Photo |
| 22 - 24 June 2018 |
d-soko
(Tokyo) |
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| Akakilike is a performance unit consisting of dancer/director Midori Kurata and her technical staff. Family Photo was first performed in 2016 as a joint production by Kurata and photographer Kai Maetani. In this revival, the original performers were joined by dancer Kentaro Sato. The only stage prop is a long narrow folding table of the sort used in conference rooms. If viewed as recollections of a single family, many of the scenes may seem contradictory, but they eloquently express the tensions inherent in family relations. |
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| im/pulse |
| 2 June - 8 July 2018 |
Kyoto City University of Arts ＠KCUA
(Kyoto) |
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| A group show introducing experiments in "audio-visual ethnography," the composite use of video, photography, sound, art and other media to take cultural anthropology beyond the bounds of conventional written ethnography. The centerpiece was HÍBRIDOS: The Spirits of Brazil, a looping, multiscreen video installation by Vincent Moon and Priscilla Telmon that immerses the viewer in the world of Brazilian spiritual ceremonies. It's a tour de force that imparts a visceral sense of the power of these rituals. |
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| Momoyo Iijima: Mirror and Buttons - Connecting Two Worlds |
| 11 - 30 July 2018 |
Galerie Tokyo Humanite
(Tokyo) |
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| Iijima is known for large installations in which she covers walls with buttons, name tags, furs and the like, or encases old clothing or kitchen utensils in wax in the shapes of houses. Such items are imbued with the memories and emotions of many users. In this show, she covered an entire wall of the gallery with mirror sheeting in which she embedded buttons in five different colors. Hanging in front of the mirror was a white shirt with open buttonholes color-coordinated with the buttons on the wall. A metaphor-laden work indeed. |
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| Jun Kitagawa: Nude sculpture T-shirt project |
| 12 June - 2 July 2018 |
ARTnSHELTER
(Tokyo) |
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| A solo presentation by Kitagawa, who for nearly two decades has pursued his project of covering nude statues about town with T-shirts. Initially it was just a prank, but over time the varied reactions he provoked -- running the gamut from high praise to condemnation -- became a subject of interest in themselves. His running joke has morphed into a device for eliciting human responses in all their diversity, and for pondering the relationship between art and the public sphere. |
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| Hiroyuki Yamada: The Man Who Became a Photograph |
| 16 June - 16 July 2018 |
Artzone
(Kyoto) |
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| When he won the Tokyo Frontline Photo Award 2016 Grand Prix, Hiroyuki Yamada also garnered the opportunity for a solo exhibition at Tokyo's G/P Gallery the following year. As soon it ended, he handed his works over to the gallery and vanished. This Kyoto show was his first since then. Taking cues from his pre-disappearance declaration that "I want to enter inside a photograph," Artzone selected works from several of Yamada's recent series. |
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