Tag - contemporary-art

 
 

CONTEMPORARY ART

Eugene Kangawa's Atelier iii is a space where visitors are invited to engage directly with the artist’s evolving practice.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 18, 2025
Eugene Kangawa’s art space embraces impermanence
The artist’s Atelier iii studio resists spectacle and asks visitors to slow down and commit to being present.
From the mid-2000s onward, Ryuichi Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 17, 2025
A slow dive into ‘a moment and an eternity’ with Ryuichi Sakamoto
New exhibition “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” is the first comprehensive overview of the musician’s installation work presented in Japan.
The year saw multiple noteworthy exhibitions dedicated to important artists who passed away in 2024, including neo-pop designer, sculptor and illustrator Keiichi Tanaami, who died in August.
CULTURE / Art / 2024 in Review
Dec 23, 2024
A year of ruin and renewal for Japan’s art world in 2024
Amid struggles caused by a weak yen, galleries turned to innovative ideas and collaborations.
The Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is located in the Giardini, a historic park in the Italian city.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 6, 2024
Venice Biennale: 70 years of bringing Japanese art to the world
The Venice Biennale has been an international showcase for Japanese art for over seven decades. This year, Yuko Mohri is representing Japan at the prestigious event.
A woman walks past a poster with an image of Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi for the 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), which is currently underway through Nov. 6.
CULTURE
Nov 2, 2024
Spend Culture Day weekend in Ginza with TIFF and Yuko Mohri
The Tokyo International Film Festival is great chance to see noteworthy films, while the Artizon Museum presents playful art installations by Yuko Mohri.
Yuko Mohri uses “invisible forces” — gravity, weather, air, magnetic fields — to create jazzy kinetic sculptures.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 1, 2024
Yuko Mohri is a maestro of unstable elements
After a banner year at the Venice Biennale, the creator of jazzy kinetic sculptures opens her first large-scale exhibition in Japan.
The Taro Nasu gallery in Tokyo, with work by the French artist Benoit Pieron on view.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 10, 2024
In Tokyo, the Taro Nasu gallery focuses on conceptual art
Striving to be unique, the small gallery is bringing attention to artists from around the world whose works have rarely been seen in Japan.
Bourgeois is perhaps best known among the general public for her giant steel spider sculptures, particularly in Tokyo, where a nearly 10-meter tall bronze cast of the original spider has loomed over the walkway in Roppongi Hills since 2003.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 4, 2024
Japan’s biggest Louise Bourgeois exhibit yet leans into ambivalence
At Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a large-scale retrospective of the visionary artist emphasizes her complex feelings toward femininity, memory, parenthood and the human body.
“A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm,” by Canadian artists Caitlind R. C. Brown and Wayne Garrett is an outdoor installation of around 14,000 recycled lenses of varied prescriptions.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 27, 2024
Weather makes for an unpredictable artist at Nagano art festival
Fram Kitagawa’s Northern Alps Art Festival embraces its inconvenient location and the natural elements.
Gwangju Biennale’s artistic director Nicolas Bourriaud developed the theme “Pansori: A Soundscape of the 21st Century” to make the event “an opera you can walk into.”
CULTURE / Art
Sep 21, 2024
Japan’s art world seeks connection at Gwangju Biennale
At the longest-running contemporary art festival in East Asia, the Japan Pavilion's display nods to historical tensions between Japan and Korea.
Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan’s “The Objects from Another Place,” erected at a former power station, was created in the likeness of structures that appeared in children’s playgrounds all over the former Soviet Union.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 27, 2024
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale's quiet expansion of hyper-local art
The event’s ninth edition doesn’t offer new bangers, but its detailed installations in the verdant mountains of Niigata Prefecture still present a unique experience.
The Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center (HCAC) aims to serve as a base for calligraphy research and education and function as a hub for calligraphy art in Asia.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 25, 2024
In uncertain times, Taiwanese art flourishes
New museums and a lively creative scene reflect an evolving, forward-looking society.
Eschewing the comfort of Tokyo’s air-conditioned museums, the inconvenient art movement draws viewers into the countryside to see artworks such as Christian Boltanski’s “Les Regards.”
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2024
A list of Japan’s remote art sites
Get off the beaten path this summer and discover art tucked away in the farthest reaches of Japan.
Amateur actor Chihiro Kawano (front) performs in Hikaru Fujii's video art installation "War Is Over" in Saiki, Oita Prefecture.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2024
War is (not) over: Hikaru Fujii probes historical memory in Kyushu
Viewable at its current location until June 16, “War Is Over” simply would not be the same work in a different location.
Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin,” once the victim of high waves that dragged it into the sea, sits at the end of a pier on the south side of Naoshima.
PODCAST / deep dive
Jun 6, 2024
The sweaty pleasure of Japan’s inconvenient art
This week, writer Thu-Huong Ha is our tour guide into the world of Japan’s inconvenient art movement.
Art OnO, which took place from April 19 to 21 in Seoul, featured a modest number of 36 participating galleries from 15 countries.
CULTURE / Art
May 17, 2024
Seoul's eclectic Art OnO shines light on Japan's artists and galleries
Japanese contributions accounted for almost a third of the non-Seoul based booths at the art fair's inaugural event, which featured artists such as Yoshitomo Nara and Hisao Domoto.
While the visual cues of cartoonishness, color and bounciness suggest fun and innocence, Saeborg’s “Saedog” performance nudges the audience toward contemplating captivity and confinement.
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2024
Art award show offers trippy scenes of seeing and being seen
The two winners of the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award offer provocatively contrasting work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
“Transfer to my Account” shows dozens of "furikomi" stubs from deposits that Yasuko Toyoshima made to her own bank accounts
CULTURE / Art
Jan 14, 2024
Yasuko Toyoshima creates delight from the quotidian
A new Tokyo exhibit of the conceptual artist’s works presents a cohesive worldview about the interaction between a life of rules and deviation.
An installation view of "Ruth Asawa Through Line" at the Whitney Museum in New York shows one of her signature suspended sculptures, a study in form, air and shadow.
CULTURE
Sep 21, 2023
Ruth Asawa: Solid form meets thin air
The Japanese American sculptor helped erase boundaries between art, craft and the decorative arts. A New York show explores her luminous connections.
Tokyo Gendai is described by fair organizers Art Assembly as Tokyo Bay’s first international contemporary art fair in 30 years.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 22, 2023
Can a new art fair finally put Tokyo on the map?
Tokyo Gendai puts on a good event but still needs to change Japanese opinions on contemporary art.

Longform

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