After spending the better part of the last year living and working in New York City, Niigata-born Makoto Aida is back in Japan with a show at Nadiff, a compact and cool art gallery/bookstore/cafe tucked down a side street just off Tokyo's fashionable Omotesando boulevard.
In the four years since its inception, Nadiff has consistently shown that it wants to be different and is willing to exhibit what might be termed "hard art" in order to build this sort of reputation.
Aida is a perfect fit: "The Edible Mimi-chan" comprises eight CG Xeroxed color-copies of watercolors; three objets; and one larger piece, "Mimi-chan no Okyakusama" (Mimi-chan's Customer), an acrylic-on-paper painting of ex-Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori with an itadakimasu smile of anticipation on his face as he prepares to bite into a tiny tempura Mimi-chan, the wide-eyed girl who is the star of this show.