How to abandon Japan: ‘Yasuo Kuniyoshi from the Fukutake Collection’ at the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art This exhibition of works by Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art is extensive, ranging from anti-Japanese campaign posters created duringView More >
Architecture/Collage/Painting: Jun Aoki + Hiroshi Sugito’s phantom ‘Happa and Harappa’ exhibition There is a famous essay by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky entitled “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal.” Those who have come to understand from listening to others that the formerView More >
Building up to the Tokyo Art Fair: G-tokyo, Tokyo Frontline and Art Fair Tokyo Scene from G-tokyo 2011. Photo Keizo Kioku. In the last few years, February has become the month for graduation exhibitions and art fairs. Visitor numbers haveView More >
Naked Photography II: Takuma Nakahira’s ‘Kirikae’ In my previous column, based on the fact that in his recent solo exhibitions at BLD Gallery and ShugoArts Takuma Nakahira had abandoned the presentation method of showing photographs in pairs, I wrote theView More >
Naked Photography: Takuma Nakahira’s ‘Documentary’ Left to right: Images of “tactile surface layers” (2007), (2009), (2007). In photography, every common noun becomes a proper noun, every being becomes “this,” and in this thisness, or haecceity, everything becomes equivalent. If “thisView More >
Moving Photographs: Taiji Matsue’s ‘survey of time’ (Part II) ANF 100465 (2010), Single channel HD digital video, 28 min 50 sec. All images: © Taiji Matsue, courtesy Taro Nasu. At a time when, due to the virtual integration of digitalView More >
Moving Photographs: Taiji Matsue’s ‘survey of time’ (Part I) JP-22 08 (2005), type C print, 50.2 x 61.1 cm. All images: © Taiji Matsue, courtesy Taro Nasu. Digital photography has routinely been discussed as a pair-concept alongside analog photography, whichView More >
Seiichi Furuya: The Disclosed Mémoires (Part II) Christine Furuya-Gössler Mémoires 1978-1985 (1997) presents in chronological order from the time Furuya met her until her death photographs of “Christine” – who by then had become a categorical point of singularity –View More >
Seiichi Furuya: The Disclosed Mémoires (Part I) East Berlin, 1985. Published intermittently since 1989, Seiichi Furuya’s series of photobooks entitled “Mémoires” was concluded this year with the appearance of volume five. Furuya’s 25-year “journey” began in the fall of 1985View More >
Not Identical, but the Same: Yuuki Matsumura’s ‘Almost-Dead Sculpture’ Yuuki Matsumura – Untitled (2009), set of three aluminum sheets, 30 x 65 x 45 cm, each. Let’s begin with the dualism of “things that can be reproduced any number ofView More >
New developments in ‘double-line painting’ In the essay I wrote for the monograph nobuya HOKI drawings, published in 2004 (1), I indicated that there is a problem at once ancient and new at the root of Kyoto-based artist Nobuya Hoki’sView More >
Shape the paint, collage the shapes and make them form a painting Masahiro Sekiguchi’s ‘Plane B’ at Kodama Gallery Tokyo In Clyfford Still’s readymade, layered and collaged paintings (see my previous column), which call to mind walls upon which layersView More >