June 11, 2008

New Art from Japan

Artkrush looks beyond Japan's alternately cute and explicit manga-mania to uncover fresh approaches to a wide range of media. We begin with a gallery-by-gallery survey of contemporary art in Tokyo, highlighting Tai Ogawa's cutouts, the radiant installations of Koki Tanaka, and diaristic paintings and drawings by Youichi Umetsu. We examine how Tomoo Gokita arrived at the black-and-white geometry that obscures his painted portraits, while Noriko Fuko — co-curator of the International Center for Photography's current Heavy Light exhibition — talks to photographer Tomoko Sawada about her work and her rapid rise. For our media pick, we recommend Tokyolife: Art and Design, which delves further into the creative minds invigorating Japan's cultural capital, and, as always, we go global gallery-hopping, stopping in New York for a peek at Matthew Brannon's graphic stilettos, and in Vienna for João Pedro Vale's bad-boy sculptures.