"The Cosmos as Metaphor' at Taka Ishii Gallery and Hotel Anteroom Kyoto is almost entirely engaging. Bringing together many diverse artists, the expectation is that the exhibition concept is spread wide. Indeed "Multi-dimensional and magical time spaces" along with "untouched civilizations" and "other mythologies" are the staggering parameters. The restriction to 12 contemporary artists helps to assuage the nebulous theoretical framework.
Among the paintings, Makoto Ofune's mineral pigments in "eternal #5" (2007) produce an abstraction of exquisite surface effects. Moving past the piece, metallic blues and amorphous purples streak aurora-like and then shimmer away. While not strictly a painter, Kazuki Umezawa creates a sprawling inkjet print titled "A Certain Mankind's Super Landscape" (2011) composed of supernumerary artistic borrowings. Combining miniature cute girls from manga, depictions of monuments and skyscrapers, a phoenix and Buddha figures in a fantastic amalgamation, it is a fusion of pop culture and painterly abstraction that is entirely successful.
Among the sculptures is Hirata Akihisa's "Flame frame" (2008), which translates the art form through the architecture of organic chemistry. According to the gallery, conjoining geometrical aluminum fittings into an elegant upright form based upon the structure of amino acids suggests the "possibility of architecture that is freed from vertical gravity." Yet, it is installed vertically and bolted to the walls.