John L. Tran - The Japan Times

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John L. Tran

For John L. Tran's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Jan 24, 2015

Hiroshi Sugimoto: On the Beach

Hiroshi Sugimoto's photography is mesmerizing partly because of its other-worldly perfection — his black-and-white prints are flawless. On its own, however, this isn't enough to justify the significance of his work in the contemporary art scene. His deadpan images of animal dioramas, waxwork figures and minimalist seascapes have been highly influential in embodying key aspects of post-modernism — ideas such as hyperreality and the critique of authenticity — while being themselves beautifully crafted objects.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 8, 2015

Keeping up with the shifting world

Designers can be an ambitious bunch, hoping to lead us all into a better, color-coordinated, minimalist future. "The Fab Mind" aims to show off attempts "to understand and to resolve social issues through design'," based upon the earth-shattering notions that the world is in the midst of change, and that we must all act, think and communicate individually.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 18, 2014

The man who turned his modernist home into an art museum

It's not all roses being the director of an independent art museum, but for Toshio Hara, the human interaction of the art world is still a more attractive prospect than that of being a businessman. In 1979 he turned the family seat — a small cluster of white modernist buildings in a quiet residential street in Shinagawa, Tokyo — into the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, which has been one of Japan's foremost venues for exhibiting art ever since. An inherently eclectic and informal space, the museum celebrates its 35th anniversary this December and its director shared some thoughts with The Japan Times.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 11, 2014

Still photography that will always remain moving

In the late 1950s, after having studied law and while pursuing a masters degree in art history, Ikko Narahara took two series of images that depicted groups of people at the extreme edges of society. One was of a woman's prison in Wakayama Prefecture and the other a Trappist monastery in Hokkaido. These images have become canonical in the history of Japanese photography, and the donation by the Nikon Corp. of their collection of images by Narahara to the National Museum of Modern Art may mean yet greater recognition of the photographer's work.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 13, 2014

Singing to quite a different tune

In the sense that "The Sound of Music" is not considered a reliable source for lessons about Nazism or that "My Fair Lady" is a profound analysis of class struggle, musicals do not generally spring to mind when considering the great achievements of French cinema. However, the National Film Center exhibition offering a retrospective overview of film director Jacques Demy's career is so entrancing it's not hard to see why the reputation of this auteur has been reassessed in recent years.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 30, 2014

Looking back to 1964 as Japan envisions 2020

"In Yedo, nothing is so common as to hear the citizens lament the times that have only just come to an end." So ran one editorial of "The Far East," an English-language periodical published in Japan in the 1870s.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 23, 2014

Lee Mingwei likes getting to know you

The secret to a good public relations interview? Switch on the voice recorder and ask questions — that is all you need to know. Except, of course, it's not. Usually the interviewee has a particular image to maintain and the interviewer is looking for something that hasn't already been said — incompatible objectives.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 9, 2014

Gronsky's detached fascination

Alexander Gronsky is slightly surprised at his own success. Standing outside the warehouse building that is hosting a joint reception for several artists, including Thomas Ruff, he chain smokes a couple of cigarettes while we chat about doing photography during a typhoon, and how nobody in the Tokyo art scene seems to have ever been to Ikebukuro.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 2, 2014

Nothing goes out of fashion quite like the future

Vincent Fournier's exhibition at the Diesel Art Gallery shows a love and fascination with technology, but it is not a straightforward adoration. The French photographer combines this with an impish sense of humor and also brings a sociologist's view to his subjects, which are portrayed with luscious precision.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 4, 2014

Between darkness and light

In the days just after the Great East Japan Earthquake, photographers, videographers and the mass media were, quite understandably, not that welcome inside the disaster zone. As time went on and survivors faced the task of dealing with the aftermath, contact with the outside world became increasingly important, not just in terms of emergency services, but also for communicating the reality of the situation.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 28, 2014

Artist takes a jab at social identity

What will it take to save the world? If you visit Maison Hermes Le Forum in Ginza in the next few weeks, artist Tsuneko Taniuchi — in the guise of Ninja Girl, wearing a flower in her hair and with a toy M16 rifle tucked in her belt — will ask you to respond to this question, and you may be surprised how easy it is to answer.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 31, 2014

No words can describe Tan's 'Terminology'

'As a visual artist it's very important to reach a point where I'm going beyond words. In interviews I find myself struggling, because we're always talking around (the work), circumscribing it. A question that I hate is 'what does this work mean?'' Fiona Tan

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 18, 2014

Contemporary art is not lost in space

While space art is a relatively small field — in which works that have actually been created in space is an even smaller subset — it can only become more commonplace as costs fall and the private sector promises to open up space travel to non-specialists, albeit very wealthy ones.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 25, 2014

Kids' stuff that adults need to see

Perhaps in the wake of this attack on seriousness, many artists have since taken refuge in childishness, whimsy or playfulness, though these values have been carefully rationed in 'Go-Betweens: The World Seen through Children,' with the emphasis being more on showing childhood as a state of vulnerability and transformation.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 4, 2014

Tokihiro Sato: A breath of fresh photography

Using a penlight at night and a mirror during the day, the photographs in Tokihiro Sato's 'Photo-Respiration' series show trails or spots of light in darkened landscapes, of which probably the most audacious are scenes of central Tokyo.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 21, 2014

Naonori Oshima: What you see is less than what you actually get

'ON Harmonic Balance' is a dark, claustrophobic collection of images that, although they illustrate many of the tropes that are often associated with the snapshot aesthetic, come across as guileless and unforced.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 2, 2014

The limitations of a medium can also be its artistic freedom

New work by the young photographer Yusuke Takeda shows how a mechanical limitation of digital cameras can be turned into a positive feature.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 5, 2014

Searching for life's little miracles

Harumichi Saito's 'Treasures' is an exhibition that aims to be life affirming, particularly for those people considered outside the mainstream in term of physical abilities.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 29, 2014

It’s ‘otherness’ that helps define ‘self’

For better or worse, in contemporary art it is common to see male photographers tend toward featuring landscapes and objects, and female photographers working on problems of shifting identities, family and the body. In this respect there is a strong lineage for Ayaka Yamamoto's first Tokyo solo exhibition of beautifully executed images of European women, which is showing at the Taka Ishii Gallery, a space well known for representing some of the more established heavy-hitters of contemporary photography. Although Yamamoto's subjects are exclusively women, social issues and feminism, as the artist herself is quick to point out, are not her concerns so much as exploring the female body as form, and examining the difficulty of comprehending one's existence.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 15, 2014

Two photographers in a state of play

In an intriguing double-header, two of photography's more colorful characters are exhibited together at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, providing an interesting glimpse of art form as play.

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[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

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Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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