Monty Dipietro - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Aug 10, 2006

A loving tribute at the Watari-um for a close friend

"Bye-Bye, Nam June Paik," the current exhibition at the Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art, is a loving tribute to an artist who has always been close to that Aoyama art space's heart.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 27, 2006

Finally hitting the local

It occurred to me recently that in the more than five years I've been covering contemporary art for The Japan Times, I've never once written about the gallery I visit most frequently -- The Konica Minolta Gallery in Shinjuku.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 13, 2006

Soaking up the 'male gaze'

What to make of photographs of blue tarpaulins, mobiles of cigarette butts and bathroom sponges folded to suggest a woman's derriere?

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jul 6, 2006

An animist explores old themes

Over the last few years, the traditional art form of nihonga has emerged as a player on the Japanese contemporary art scene. I can only guess why this is -- something connected to nostalgia or nationalism perhaps? Or could it be that growing social and economic uncertainty has led Japanese to regard the practiced restraint informing the creation of nihonga as something of a comfort haven?

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 22, 2006

Lighting up suburban Tokyo nights

What a concept: Imagine if you could see as clearly and in as much detail at midnight as you can at noon. The desire for night vision is an old one, but frankly the visions provided by new technologies have not impressed me -- the best I've experienced were a set of cumbersome electric goggles that yielded greenish, ghostlike images. Much better are the serene nocturnal views in the new body of work by Japanese photographer Tomoyuki Sakaguchi.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jun 8, 2006

'100 years of Korean art'

The Korean National Museum of Contemporary Art sits in a scenic location by the mountains, 30 minutes from downtown Seoul. The sprawling sculpture garden out front is a beautiful place to relax, while the 25,000 sq. meters of space inside make it the largest museum in the country.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 25, 2006

Incidentally Capturing the city

Berlin is not beautiful like Paris, rich like London, or charming like Amsterdam. Prewar buildings in the German capital are pockmarked by bullet holes, while postwar architecture testifies to the city's division due to the Cold War -- American, British and French sectors were restored or rebuilt, the Soviet area, by far the largest, remains filled with vestiges of a severe Stalinist civil experiment.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

May 11, 2006

Japan grads go apolitical

With its current exhibition, "Index #2 -- Life Styles," Tokyo Wonder Site in Ochanomizu has mounted a worthwhile survey of recent Japanese art-school graduates. Prolific critic Kentaro Ichihara, in association with Kyoto University of Art and Design, selected five Kanto- and five Kansai-region artists to provide an indication of where the next generation of Japanese artists are headed.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Apr 27, 2006

A permanent-collection show that impresses

The modern city envelops modern man so completely that he inhabits it even in his dreams -- even in his best dreams. That's the message weaving through the current exhibition at the Watari-Um Museum of Art in Tokyo's Aoyama district. "Beautiful Cities in Dreams" is the eighth incarnation in Watari's "I Love Art" series, a group show occurring every couple of years.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Apr 13, 2006

Goths, terra and tears

The Complex Building in Roppongi opened with five major contemporary art galleries a couple of years back, around the same time as the nearby Mori Art Museum. It has, however, been somewhat overlooked as new and larger spaces have debuted out east in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 30, 2006

Getting down to just art

In the development of contemporary art scenes in Asian countries over recent years, a strong tendency has been for artists to buck the yoke of tradition and steer well clear of anything that might remotely resemble their nation's folk art -- unless of course their intention was to mock it.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 23, 2006

Tokyo Museum of Photography puts the private out in public

Conceived during the optimism of the bubble era, but built in the mid 1990s, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography's development was stunted by budget cuts, less-than-impressive attendance and an unfocused raison d'etre.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Mar 9, 2006

Collages catch a fire

Computer software has revived the term "cut and paste." We execute the commands when writing documents, treating images, or slipping stuff into an e-mail. Cutting and pasting is so simple that it's easy to forget that the actions were originally performed not in a flash with a cursor and a mouse -- but over long hours, with scissors and glue. Remember that? Francesca Gabbiani does.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Feb 23, 2006

Kiyosumi galleries: Optimistic in Tokyo's east

Painting, photography and installations from emerging and experienced artists have made for a strong start to the Kiyosumi galleries' first spring season.

CULTURE / Art

Feb 9, 2006

Berlin/Tokyo : Invitation to a car wreck

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 26, 2006

Tokyo Gallery: Liu Zheng shows 'Gaudy Art' embroidery

Several of my recent columns have dealt with new art spaces and centers in Tokyo. Today I want to wrap that up with a look at a gallery that has shunned the relocation trend by remaining in the city's original contemporary art district -- Ginza.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Jan 12, 2006

WONDER SITE: Strong words in Shibuya fail to bring a crowd

In 2001, a peculiar contemporary-art space called Tokyo Wonder Site opened in a disused building in Bunkyo Ward in Northeast Tokyo. Supported by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the project attracted a measure of initial interest, but never developed into anything like a hot spot for art. This is probably because the shows were middle of the road and the space was in the middle of nowhere.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 29, 2005

Reasons for smiles after the disasters

I participated last Sunday in a thing called the "Dean Martin Memorial Stop Misery Outreach Action." This is a public happening that goes back some 10 years in Japan, and involves distributing one hundred martinis -- shaken on the spot, with uncommonly good gin and vermouth, garnished with pimento-stuffed Spanish olives, and served in crystal cocktail glasses. The nearly surreal event occurs on the day the famous comedian and lounge singer died, Christmas, and manifested itself this year in the middle of a homeless encampment in Chuo Park, across from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Accompanying the martinis was Dean Martin's music, merriment and crapulence, along with warm bear hugs and wide toothless smiles.

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 15, 2005

The form of the infinite

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "The sky is the daily bread of the eyes."

CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN

Dec 1, 2005

Getting a little help from friends

Federico Herrero made a splash with his wall paintings of weirdly morphed animals at the 2001 Venice Biennale and, at age 22, became the youngest-ever winner of the prestigious art fair's Golden Lion Award. In the wake of that success, the Costa Rican-born painter garnered international representation (showing in Tokyo with the Gallery Koyanagi), and was invited to the Aichi Expo this year, where he painted world maps on the bottom of two artificial ponds.

author

Meta

Podcast

Longform

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

In your social network

In your inbox

In your social network

In your inbox