MOT Satellite, 2017 Spring, by the deep rivers Various sites around Kiyosumi-shirakawa; 11 February to 20 March Upwards into the second exhibition in this venue, ‘Tertiary Sex Characteristics’ by Hanayo, I find myself in a room that’s at stark contrast to the previous space downstairs. There is natural light, detritus scattered about, dead and dry …
MOT Satellite, 2017 Spring, by the deep rivers Various sites around Kiyosumi-shirakawa; 11 February to 20 March In cafes, garages, shops, some traditional venues but mostly non-traditional sites for art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) presents a series of artwork, shows and installations across Kiyosumi-shirakawa under the moniker by the deep rivers. There …
Reijiro Wada | Ariel Schlesinger SCAI The Bathhouse; 27 January to 25 February Eight artworks occupy a square gallery space, set out in iambic rhythm, delivering poetry in materials and ideas. Brass, polished steel and glass sit in equilibrious partnership with brandy, citric acid and bone. Time is both accelerated and accumulated in meditations on … Continue reading
Tomohiro Kano and Yoshiaki Kojiro, (joint exhibition untitled) Gallery Tokyo + Beijing Tokyo Art Projects; 21 January to 18 February Totemic structures sit evenly spaced on the white-tiled floor of a nondescript space on the seventh-floor of an office building in Ginza. Some twenty-four pieces, most of them on flat and polished steel plates, are … Continue reading
Ryunosuke Goji & Issei Yamagata, optical camouflage Youboko Art Space, Tokyo; 21 January to 29 January Featuring video, print, sculpture, digital image and found objects, this punchy show by artists Ryunosuke Goji and Issei Yamagata works like a complex codex dissected into planar fragments and laid bare across a domestic space to entrap and enchant … Continue reading
Fiona Amundsen, Arsenal of Democracy Tokyo Wonder Site, Hongo, Tokyo; 14 January to 12 February It’s hard not to hear the echo of the adage, ‘if we do not learn from history we are condemned to repeat it’, when viewing the memorable and memorialising work of Fiona Amundsen. Featuring two poignant video works of a … Continue reading
ob, Lights Shimmering Between Realms Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo; 20 January to 23 February Young, wide-eyed women stand in soft landscapes like ethereal marker points in the paintings of an artist called ‘ob’. An ambient soundscape set the mood of the show, performed lived by Ai Kamano and Kazuki Sugawara, and also worked as the … Continue reading
Gentaro Ishizuka, Demarcation Gallery 916, Tokyo; 20 January to 26 March At the risk of sounding like every cliched art wet dream, I took an elevated train ride at night through the downtown skyscrapers of Tokyo to the harbour district of Minato-ku in search of a cavernous exhibition space on the sixth floor of what … Continue reading
Yukari Bunya, Works 2010-2016 Gallery Jin Projects, 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo; 20 January to 12 February Explosive fragmentations of occupied architectural boundaries spill across planar surfaces. High octane momentum is captured in an apparent occlusion of both time-lapse elongation and freeze-frame immediacy. Artist Yukari Bunya manages to channel futurism, axonometrics and intuition in her wonderful … Continue reading
Shiho Kagabu, Critical Point from Unknown Sculptures Series No. 7, #2 gallery 21 yo-j, Setagaya, Tokyo; 7 January – 22 January On the cusp between the scattered and the arranged, Shiho Kagabu’s collection of sculptural works reads more like a singular composition than an amalgam of parts. The room-sheet, however, reveals that various components of … Continue reading
Chiyuki Sakagami, Positive Transference Part 2: Blue Little Pieces MEM Gallery, Ebisu, Tokyo; 15 January – 5 February If the curious minds of ancient peoples could summon innate knowledge about the microbiology of living organisms in the form of shamanic drawings, then they too would have produced the sort of images on display at MEM Gallery by … Continue reading
Taisuke Koyama, Generated X G/P Gallery, Ebisu, Tokyo; 6 January – 16 February In a small room a series of monolithic paper structures stand like sentinels throughout the space. In opposing corners, vertical flatscreen monitors peer across the longest route as if in coded conversation between a crowd of strangers. Navigating your way through the space is like … Continue reading
the subMachine 