Shaun Tan's glimmers of hope in somber times
Tan's imaginative worlds are usually a little dark, featuring dystopias, alienation, suffering, bureaucracy and monsters — but the camaraderie between family, friends and strangers lead to hope and happy endings.
Julian Opie: A fascinating view of the mundane
Julian Opie's schematic reductions of people, animals and landscapes to planes of color may be fun and casual, but it's not just eye-candy — he gets us to see much more than he shows us.
Ways to never forget Christian Boltanski
Memories eroded, recovered, or forged from or for other peoples and times are the major themes of "Christian Boltanski: Lifetime," the artist's first full-scale Japan retrospective at The National Museum of Art, Osaka.
Waking up to Asia's growing role in art
One year after The National Art Center, Tokyo, and the Mori Art Museum presented the expansive "Sunshower: Contemporary Art From Southeast Asia 1980s to Now," The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, (MOMAT) has unveiled "Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s." Both projects were ...
Bertrand Lavier's 'Medley' blows hot and cold
Bertrand Lavier seems to relish messing with our cognitive dissonance. As the self-taught artist, who originally studied horticulture, put it in a 2016 interview, "Art is a matter of paradoxes on nearly every level."
Yayoi Kusama in Jakarta: She'll be your mirror
"Life is the Heart of a Rainbow," the Yayoi Kusama exhibition now on at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jakarta, is the first retrospective of the artist Indonesia has ever hosted.
As the phrase goes, "s—- happens." Walead Beshty explores different ways that it may happen, and in doing so, he gently suggests that we consider the implications. His solo show at Rat Hole Gallery exemplifies this. There are two series of works: a selection ...
Fujiwara wants the dirt to stick
White often seems to be used in contemporary art in Japan as a kind of short cut to signify "beauty," "purity" or "spirituality." Simon Fujiwara's show "White Day" at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery is, as the title suggests, overwhelmingly white, but it's designed ...
March 11-April 23 New York-based contemporary artist Mariko Mori made a name for herself during the 1990s, creating works such as "Play With Me," which incorporated the Japanese otaku (obsessive fan) influences of anime and cosplay into art. Her recent works, however, are in striking ...
Feb. 3-April 22 Since its establishment in 2006, the "Shiseido Art Egg" has been a set of annual solo shows for the finalists of a public-entry art competition. For its 10th anniversary, the exhibition is featuring the work of installation artist Yoi Kawakubo (Feb. 3-26), ...
'Tokyo: Sensing the Cultural Magma of the Metropolis'
Nov. 7-Feb. 14 As the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo explores Yoko Ono's experience in Tokyo during the 1950s '60s and '70s as part of its main exhibition, it continues a view of the capital with an eye on the '80s for its concurrent contemporary ...
'Nissan Art Award 2015: Exhibition of New Works by Seven Finalists'
Nov. 7-Jan. 31 A relatively new prize, the Nissan Art Award has been helping contemporary Japanese artists garner recognition both domestically and internationally since 2013. The exhibition showcases the works of this year's seven finalists: Sayaka Akiyama, Tsuyoshi Hisakado, Takashi Ishida, Takahiro Iwasaki, Futoshi Miyagi, Yuko ...
