A Restatement: The Art of ‘Ground Zero’ (Part 11) Nukes and Niigata – Addendum I Installation at Yukihiro Yoshihara’s solo exhibition “Pleasure Dome” (1989) at Spiral Garden, Tokyo, 100 television monitors, five video projectors, 600 x 600 x 700 cm.View More >
A cynical beginning – TOLOT heuristic SHINONOME The end of March was art fair week in Tokyo, but I found the art space TOLOT heuristic SHINONOME, newly opened in Shinonome, more interesting than the likes of Art Fair Tokyo andView More >
Painter and ‘counterfeiter’ – On ‘Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing’ (Part 3) Aida Makoto + 21st Century Cardboard Guild – Monument for Nothing II (2000-). Installation view: Mori Art Museum, 2013. All images: Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Caught betweenView More >
‘B-grade horror’ reputation – documentation and mediacy The criticisms in my previous two columns dealing with Lieko Shiga’s exhibition “Rasen Kaigan,” or what have been dubbed the “Lieko Shiga = B-grade horror” theory, were penned to provide some balance toView More >
Painter and ‘counterfeiter’ – On ‘Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing’ (Part 2) Aida Makoto – Dog (Snow) (1998), mineral pigments and acrylic on Japanese paper and board, 73 × 100 cm. Photo Kei Miyajima, © Makoto Aida, courtesy Mizuma ArtView More >
The meaning of photography, or, B(latent)-horror effects (2) One can detect in Lieko Shiga’s photographs any number of effects familiar to us from “creepy photography.” Streaming light, water, etc. (ectoplasm, ethereal bodies, mysterious light, blood, liquid, etc.) Above: From theView More >
Painter and ‘counterfeiter’ – On ‘Makoto Aida: Monument for Nothing’ (Part 1) Installation view of “Aida Makoto: Monument for Nothing” at the Mori Art Museum. Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Photo Osamu Watanabe, courtesy Mori Art Museum. The exhibition “Makoto Aida:View More >
The meaning of photography, or, B(latent) horror effects (1) Installation view of “Lieko Shiga: Rasen Kaigan.” Photo Lieko Shiga, courtesy Sendai Mediatheque Photographs are endowed with both a certain physical substantivity, to the extent that they are “traces” left byView More >
A Restatement: The Art of ‘Ground Zero’ (Part 10) Nukes and Niigata III Anne Graham – Shinohara’s House (2012) Installation view at the Kozaburo Shinohara House, Gokahama, Niigata. Photo courtesy the Water and Land – Niigata Art Festival organizing committeeView More >
On ‘reproduction’ – The tea bowls of Kohei Nakamura (Part 2) Kohei Nakamura – Red Raku tea bowl (2012) Kazuo Yagi wrote an interesting essay on the subject of “reproduction”: On Kiyomizu-zaka there was an artist skilled in “reproduction.” HisView More >
Takashi Azumaya – the ‘being and temperature’ Shinro Ohtake – Dub-Hei & New Chanel (1999) (detail). Installation view at “Art/Domestic – Temperature of the Time” (Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo) Photo: Masataka Nakano, courtesy Setagaya Art Museum. The independent curator TakashiView More >
The independent curator Takashi Azumaya died on October 16 of this year. Organized by Azumaya at the Setagaya Art Museum in 1999, “Art / Domestic: Temperature of the Time” remains one of the defining exhibitions of the 1990s. Also workingView More >