Mario A. at BUNKAMURA GALLERY

亜 真里男 Mario A.

「新日本画（お茶室）」"Shin Nihon-ga" (Tea-house) 2010年

油彩・キャンヴァス・F40

2010, oil on canvas, 80.3×100 cm

Mario A.'s week-long show is opening at the Bunkamura Gallery this upcoming Wednesday, June 30th. For more information check the gallery website.

Chihiro Kabata "事象の地平線 /Event Horizon"

Chihiro Kabata is showing her latest work (yes, she is very prolific!) at Shinjuku Ophthalmologist Gallery. While every work in the show is done in her trademark purple ink, there are two interesting new developments. First, there is a small work where the markings are linear so that their ball-point origin is not immediately apparent. A colleague of mine pointed out that the parallel lines in this image seem to imitate a brushstroke taken across the surface and back, something like Roy Lichtenstein's cheeky "brushstroke" in his Big Painting No. 6 (1965). The second departure from Kabata's floating ink shapes comes in the site specific installation placed in a separate room. It consists of a strip-shaped three part mirror crossed with a jagged ink line that runs across its whole length, turning the corners with the mirror itself.

The exhibition will be up through June 27th.

Yuta Hayakawa at Gallery αM

Yuta Hayakawa, installation view at αM

Also in Bakurocho, just a few blocks away from the Motus Fort gallery, the Muashino Art University's gallery αM, is now hosting the new installment of their six-part series Complex Circuit—an exhibition by Yuta Hayakawa. The works, with one exception all from 2010, are monochrome and are put together compose a palpable, if bizarre, landscape of oversized pebbles, white florescent tubes, a hydraulic sculpture, a spinning bottle attached to a nearly invisible fishline sting, and a bifurcated sculpture made of wooden planks. The latter goes by a soothing title of It's all right. The cohesion of the works on view makes Hayakawa's exhibition look more like an installation, a bit too smooth perhaps, but also coherent and very zen.

Kadar Brock "Conjuring and Dispelling"

Arcane Gate, 2009

Marker, spray paint and house paint on paper

Image courtesy of Motus Fort gallery

Jeffrey Chiedo's Motus Fort gallery is now showing the works of Kadar Brock. The key word of the exhibition is "conjuring," in reference to the conflicting modes of painting and the obscured words and textures that come and go seemingly at the will of the artist-magitian. The two types of works on display are the monochrome mixed media paintings from 2009, like the one above, and the smaller figurative images in color. The monochromes picture the writing obscured by paint smears in what could be described as a gesture of materialization—the artist-magitian realizes the words as he crosses them out. The immateriality of the legible is made into a material sensibility using the physical solidity of paint. Several of the monochromes recall the later works of Anthony Tapies although Brock's pictorial concerns seem to be less expressive and more phenomenological.

The other portion of the exhibition are the color multi-media Wizards paintings on paper framed by the artist (all 2010). These already have their designated art history references (i.e. Holbein, Titian, Carravagio), and present, as the title suggests, a gallery of various wizards and conjurors. One name not mentioned in the dead artist roster was Mark Chagall's, but I certainly sensed his hovering hand all around the color wizards.

The show is on view through July 17th.

Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki, “Koki No Shashin : Photographs of A Seventy Year Old” 2010, RP Direct print, Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery

With the big anniversary exhibition “Koki No Shashin : Photographs of A Seventy Year Old” at the Taka Ishii gallery having just closed, "the ultimate photographer" is featuring more of his latest work in a new show at the Rat Hole Gallery in Omotesando. It coincides with the release of Araki's most recent publication "Sentimental Journey, Spring Journey." You might even be able to get a glimpse at the man himself at the opening reception scheduled for 7 pm on June 11.

writtenafterwards + Makoto Tanijiri and more

There is a new (commercial) art space in town, it opened just last month. TABLOID is self-described as a "complex culture place....where work and play are created." Their next event is coming up this Saturday, June 12th, and looks quite interesting because it involves the very artists-designers that made a big splash at S/S 2009 Tokyo Fashion Week. It will consist of Makoto Tanijiri's installation (doors open at 17:00), followed by a show of the ultra-modern brand writtenafterwards. The show is from 18:00 until 18:30. After that you can view the brand's installation and drop in on another one by coconogacco x driff open-classroom. Or, you can join the on-site party organized by Art Hotel Nest Tokyo.

The event, enigmatically titled "Crime and Punishment" is curated by fashion designer Yoshikazu Yamagata. The entry fee is ¥1500. You can find all the information on the ART HOTEL NEST TOKYO page.

"PSYCHOANALYSIS: Gazes on Photo and Video Art from Austria"

Markus Schinwald, Ten in Love, 2006, 35mm film on DVD, 4'37"

The Tokyo Wonder Site in Shibuya is hosting an exhibition of (mostly) video and photo art by eight Austrian artists. The show examines how the country's psychoanalytical heritage, that came to be seen as one of its biggest cultural imports, relates to the varying notions of "Metropolis." The Vienna and Vancouver-based duo Bitter and Weber are represented by several digital collages where urban images are comprised of typographic symbols and letters. Their images feature an interplay of patterns that change depending on the viewer's proximity and the level of visual concentration; same goes for Maria Hahnenkamp's lush pigment prints. Architectural settings of Aglaia Konrad's and Andrea Witzmann's respective video and c-print contributions can alternate between functioning as main subjects or auxiliary elements. Dorit Margreiter's Pavillion (2009), a 35 mm film, scrutinizes the intersection of architecture and gender, while Ursula Mayer's Fallen Imperial video installation from 2003 focuses exclusively on gender—perhaps an inevitable nod to the discourse born of the investigations into the psyche of the sexes. I particularly liked Markus Schinwald's room where the Ten in Love video (2006) provided a futuristic backdrop for the wistfully old-fashioned representations of obscurity in his 2007 wood and metal sculpture Legs (Untitled), and the 2010 pigment prints of Lukas, Magnus, Nicklaus and Gunter. The latter echo Max Klinger's prefiguration of fetishism in his 1881 series Ein Handschuh (A Glove).

This project is a part of the Austria-Japan Friendship Year which rendered several other quality exhibitions. There is also a handsomely printed bilingual catalogue available for purchase.

"William Eggleston: Paris-Kyoto"

Last night the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art inaugurated the exhibition of William Eggleston's photographs and drawings—the artist's first solo museum show in Japan. The majority of the work on view comes from the two recent series shot in Paris and Kyoto respectively. Among the photographs are light jet prints and type-C prints, many framed together with a pendant drawing. One of the galleries is devoted entirely to the 1976 William Eggleston's Guide shown the same year at the MoMA in New York. The Hara exhibition is backed by two collections: the Cartier Foundation and of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. The show will be open through August 22. If you visit on Sunday you can take advantage of the "BloomBus" shuttle that runs between the museum and the Shinagawa station.