When you have a venue that provides such ample exhibition space as the National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT), it can be quite a challenge to find a single contemporary artist worthy to fill it. Earlier this year, Hitoshi Nomura, with a long, varied career and many large installations to his name, just about justified the generous allocation of space for his solo show. But, faced with NACT's spacious halls, most contemporary artists, especially those working in two-dimensional media, run a distinct risk of being dwarfed.
Perhaps because of this, with its latest show, NACT has decided to share the space between two prominent artists — abstract painter Yoko Matsumoto and photographic artist Rika Noguchi.
In order to give a degree of unity to what is actually two solo shows, the museum has come up with the generic theme of "light" — a theme, it must be said, that is capable of pairing practically any two artists on the planet, as they all rely on light for their art to be seen.