Tag - contemporary-art

 
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July 06, 2025
 

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CONTEMPORARY ART

Kenji Yanobe’s spacesuited cats are the main characters of “Ship’s Cat Island,” the inaugural exhibition at Hyper Museum Hanno in Saitama Prefecture.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2025
What can Kenji Yanobe’s cosmic cats teach us about humanity?
The spacesuited felines will be familiar to those who have visited the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka or Tokyo’s Ginza Six shopping complex last year.
Detail of Takashi Murakami, “Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP” (2023-25)
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2025
New Naoshima museum bets on Asia, not the West
The Naoshima New Museum of Art is Tadao Ando’s 10th contribution to the popular art islands.
Takuro Tamayama’s sculpture “Models (Pair, 6 sets, 12 rings)” comes with a mathematical formation that scales it for different spaces.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 20, 2025
The floor is art: Takuro Tamayama transforms mundanity
With “Takuro Tamayama: Floor,” the artist, at 34, has become the youngest person to ever hold a solo show at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
Excerpts from Natsume Soseki’s “Ten Nights of Dreams” and footage of dancer Min Tanaka and "shō" player Mayumi Miyata play across three large screens that are reflected in a mirror-like pool of water in the installation “Time Time.”
CULTURE / Art
Mar 4, 2025
Crowds shouldn’t stop you from seeing the hit Ryuichi Sakamoto exhibit
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” has far exceeded expected visitor numbers, but there could be an upside to the crowds.
A model wears items that are part of Takashi Murakami's collaboration with MLB.
BASEBALL / MLB
Feb 28, 2025
Famed artist Takashi Murakami partners with MLB for Tokyo Series
The new collection includes t-shirts and sweatshirts adorned with Murakami’s signature style, along with hats, baseballs and gloves.
“Light Court” (2024) is based on the “Lightcourt” space at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by metabolist architect Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007).
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2025
Yuki Harada's contemplative artworks ponder vanishing
The artist spent time researching Japanese migrants who left Hiroshima and Yamaguchi prefectures for Hawaii, and the U.S. island state often features in his art.
Eugene Kangawa's Atelier iii is a space where visitors are invited to engage directly with the artist’s evolving practice.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 18, 2025
Eugene Kangawa’s art space embraces impermanence
The artist’s Atelier iii studio resists spectacle and asks visitors to slow down and commit to being present.
From the mid-2000s onward, Ryuichi Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 17, 2025
A slow dive into ‘a moment and an eternity’ with Ryuichi Sakamoto
New exhibition “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” is the first comprehensive overview of the musician’s installation work presented in Japan.
The year saw multiple noteworthy exhibitions dedicated to important artists who passed away in 2024, including neo-pop designer, sculptor and illustrator Keiichi Tanaami, who died in August.
CULTURE / Art / 2024 in Review
Dec 23, 2024
A year of ruin and renewal for Japan’s art world in 2024
Amid struggles caused by a weak yen, galleries turned to innovative ideas and collaborations.
The Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is located in the Giardini, a historic park in the Italian city.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 6, 2024
Venice Biennale: 70 years of bringing Japanese art to the world
The Venice Biennale has been an international showcase for Japanese art for over seven decades. This year, Yuko Mohri is representing Japan at the prestigious event.
A woman walks past a poster with an image of Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi for the 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), which is currently underway through Nov. 6.
CULTURE
Nov 2, 2024
Spend Culture Day weekend in Ginza with TIFF and Yuko Mohri
The Tokyo International Film Festival is great chance to see noteworthy films, while the Artizon Museum presents playful art installations by Yuko Mohri.
Yuko Mohri uses “invisible forces” — gravity, weather, air, magnetic fields — to create jazzy kinetic sculptures.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 1, 2024
Yuko Mohri is a maestro of unstable elements
After a banner year at the Venice Biennale, the creator of jazzy kinetic sculptures opens her first large-scale exhibition in Japan.
The Taro Nasu gallery in Tokyo, with work by the French artist Benoit Pieron on view.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 10, 2024
In Tokyo, the Taro Nasu gallery focuses on conceptual art
Striving to be unique, the small gallery is bringing attention to artists from around the world whose works have rarely been seen in Japan.
Bourgeois is perhaps best known among the general public for her giant steel spider sculptures, particularly in Tokyo, where a nearly 10-meter tall bronze cast of the original spider has loomed over the walkway in Roppongi Hills since 2003.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 4, 2024
Japan’s biggest Louise Bourgeois exhibit yet leans into ambivalence
At Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a large-scale retrospective of the visionary artist emphasizes her complex feelings toward femininity, memory, parenthood and the human body.
“A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm,” by Canadian artists Caitlind R. C. Brown and Wayne Garrett is an outdoor installation of around 14,000 recycled lenses of varied prescriptions.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 27, 2024
Weather makes for an unpredictable artist at Nagano art festival
Fram Kitagawa’s Northern Alps Art Festival embraces its inconvenient location and the natural elements.
Gwangju Biennale’s artistic director Nicolas Bourriaud developed the theme “Pansori: A Soundscape of the 21st Century” to make the event “an opera you can walk into.”
CULTURE / Art
Sep 21, 2024
Japan’s art world seeks connection at Gwangju Biennale
At the longest-running contemporary art festival in East Asia, the Japan Pavilion's display nods to historical tensions between Japan and Korea.
Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan’s “The Objects from Another Place,” erected at a former power station, was created in the likeness of structures that appeared in children’s playgrounds all over the former Soviet Union.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 27, 2024
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale's quiet expansion of hyper-local art
The event’s ninth edition doesn’t offer new bangers, but its detailed installations in the verdant mountains of Niigata Prefecture still present a unique experience.
The Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center (HCAC) aims to serve as a base for calligraphy research and education and function as a hub for calligraphy art in Asia.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 25, 2024
In uncertain times, Taiwanese art flourishes
New museums and a lively creative scene reflect an evolving, forward-looking society.
Eschewing the comfort of Tokyo’s air-conditioned museums, the inconvenient art movement draws viewers into the countryside to see artworks such as Christian Boltanski’s “Les Regards.”
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2024
A list of Japan’s remote art sites
Get off the beaten path this summer and discover art tucked away in the farthest reaches of Japan.
Amateur actor Chihiro Kawano (front) performs in Hikaru Fujii's video art installation "War Is Over" in Saiki, Oita Prefecture.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2024
War is (not) over: Hikaru Fujii probes historical memory in Kyushu
Viewable at its current location until June 16, “War Is Over” simply would not be the same work in a different location.
Japan braces for more quakes as authorities dismiss doomsday hype
Evacuees from Akuseki Island, located in the Tokara island chain in Kagoshima Prefecuture, arrive at Kagoshima Port on Friday.
Hidden AI prompts in academic papers spark concern about research integrity
Waseda University is one of 14 institutions in eight countries found to have used hidden prompts in research papers.
A prophesied disaster (likely) won’t strike Japan this weekend
A viral manga prediction of a July 5 disaster has gripped Japan with anxiety and triggered an economic impact, but experts warn that while such dates are unreliable, the threat of a massive earthquake remains real. 
Residents of Tokara Islands begin evacuation as seismic swarm continues
Details about evacuations from Akuseki Island, located in the Tokara island chain in Kagoshima Prefecture, is seen written on a whiteboard in the city of Kagoshima on Thursday.
U.S. military apologizes over Okinawa sexual assault case
Col. Neil Owens (right), chief of staff for the 3rd Marine Division, bows in apology at the Okinawa Prefectural Government office in Naha on Thursday.
Ghibli’s Isao Takahata exhibit shows how beloved anime is made
“The man who planted Japanese animation” exhibition includes a variety of sketches, drawings and animation cels from Isao Takahata films such as color design for characters by Michiyo Yasuda from "Grave of the Fireflies."
Flag football facing challenges and opportunities ahead
Japan’s women’s flag football team at the 2025 International Bowl in Los Angeles in June. The sport is enjoying continued growth in the country.
From Hokusai’s Great Wave, shinkansen to One Piece: a cultural treasure box for Lego Japan
Michael Ebbesen, general manager of Lego Japan, says Lego bricks based on Japanese culture have a rich global appeal and are sellable around the world.
With farmed fish, RelationFish swims against the tide in fine dining
Chef Hideaki Matsuo (middle) and the staff of Oseto Suisan Fisheries prepare to check on their sustainably farmed fish.
As Southeast Asia heats up, a Japanese cooling giant sees a major opportunity
An employee of Daikin Cambodia explains the use of different tools during an air conditioner installation training session in Phnom Penh. Daikin is one of Japan’s oldest air conditioning companies, but as Japan’s population falls, the firm is keying in on overseas growth.

Podcast

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