Yukiko Suto "Field Exhibition"

Take Ninagawa just opened a new exhibition of large scale panels by Yukiko Sato. Each of the four images, done in a combination of pencil and oil on gesso-covered panels took months to produce, and Sato's effort can only be properly appreciated through a close examination of these meticulously rendered landscapes. The paintings originate in photographs taken by the artist, but little of the ease and informality we associate with nature remains in the final product, the aestheticized version of the landscapes. Sato's visual recollections—every blade of grass, every flower bud, every little rock rendered in a hyper-realist way—render live nature symbolic. The works, for the most part monochrome, owning to the the dominant graphite of the pencil, are punctuated with matte blotches of color which appears to float upon the surface of the support. It is as if we are witnessing a transformation of an embodied landscape into an imagined one: colors and lines fading away, blankness of the panel seeping through and finally taking over. 

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Roadside Garden 2, 2010, detail. Oil,pencil and plaster on camvas mounted on panel, 130.3 x 194 cm.

 The exhibition will run through November 27.

Contemporary Art Tokyo Is Pleased To Announce Its One Year Anniversary

Wako Works of Art Opening

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Nathan Hylden at Misako & Rosen

Untitled, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 73.6 x 58.4cm. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Last Sunday Misako & Rosen opened a new exhibition of Nathan Hylden's work. This is his sophomore show at the gallery, the last one dating all the way back to 2007. The seven paintings on view (four acrylics and silkscreen on aluminum, and three acrylics on canvas) help to trace the artist's preoccupation with the processes and the effects of pigment application. The regular grid of silkscreen dots enhances the lightness inherent in aluminum, making the works hover above the surface of the wall. In contrast, the paintings on canvas absorb the light, bringing forth the materiality of the texture of the support.

The show will be on through October 31.

Zdravko Toic, The Invisible, at the Hiromart Gallery

“HBeAg,” 2010, paper collage, mat board, ink on paper, 40.6 cm x 101.6 cm. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Just a few paces away from Yuka Contemporary, the Hiromart Gallery is showing abstract paper collages by Croatian-born, New-York based artist Zdravko Toic. The works of view reference surrealist and constructivist vocabularies, reviving the spirit of mid-career Wilfredo Lam and early Naum Gabo. The cut paper portions compete with the inked cores of the work. 

The exhibition will run through November 14.

Yuka Contemporary Opening

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RongRong & inri map

Untitled No.25, 2008, gelatin silver print, 50.8 x 61 cm, edition of 12. Image courtesy of the gallery.

There is a new addition to the NADiff a/p/a/r/t— the MEM gallery. The gallery has been established in 2003 in Osaka, and has recently relocated to Tokyo. Their inagural exhibition at NADiff showcases the recent work by two Beijing-based photographers RongRong and Inri, a couple that met in 1999 and embarked on a productive personal and professional collaboration. After 2000 the two became something of an art brand, opening, in  2006, the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre which contains a library, a gallery, dark rooms and artist residencies. The fourteen works on view blend personal life with social statements, oscillating between the timeless and the current. 

The show will run through October 22.