fresh paint

Each year art institutions in Japan takes pulse of Japanese contemporary art. Here a limited selection of fresh talents presented recently even though on most of the 'canvas' the 'paint' dried long time ago..

Artist File 2009
at The National Art Center is the annual showcase of what is new and interesting in contemporary art. This year NACT curators selected 9 artist (8 of them of Japanese origines): Ishikawa Naoki (photography), Hirakawa Shigeko (installation), Miyanaga Aiko (installation), Ohira Minoru (sculpture), Murai Shingo (sculpture), Kaneda Mio (painting), Saito Meo (painting), Tsugami Miyuki (painting).

Tsugami Miyuki, View 020403, 2002

Born 1973 in Osaka, MA at Kyoto University of Art and Design. Winner of VOCA prize in 2003, art resident of Ohara Museum of Art in 2005.

Hirakawa Shigeko, Tree of photosynthesis, 2009

Environmental artist born 1953 in Kurume (Fukuoka). Graduate of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

Tree of Photosynthesis has been produced from plastic discs containing photochromic pigments which work like artificial leaves and stimulate photosynthesis through changing color: they are violet by day light and translucent milky white by night.

VOCA (The Vision of Contemporary Art) 2009
at Ueno Royal Museum is a showcase of 35 artist selected by curators, journalists and researchers from all over Japan. Choices are very conservative and concentrate mainly on one medium - paitings. This year VOCA Grand prize winner is Mise Natsunosuke, one of the young hopes of Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) while VOCA Encouragement went to Tomoko Kashiki and Kei Takemura.

Mise Natsunosuke, no English title, 2008

Tomoko Kashiki, Flower, 2006

Born 1982 in Kyoto working towards her PhD at the Graduate School of Art at Kyoto City University of Arts. Currently her exhibition runs at Ota Fine Arts. Her flat, smooth texture and flowing lines have a strong resemblance to Japanese paintings at the first sight. However all of her paintings are painted in acrylic, and managed to achieve smooth surface and layers of colors through her original process of painting on canvas and sanding.

Kei Takemura, detail of A.N.'s living room, premonition of earthquake, 2005

Born 1975 in Tokyo, lives and works in Berlin. Graduate of Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music and Berlin Art Academy. After observing friends' daily activities Takemura reenacts their living using media like embroidery, drawing and performance. It evokes a sense that the fragments of intimate feelings and memories toward certain spaces and people are layered one after another. His works were shown at NACT last year as part of Artist File 2008.

Kohei Nawa, PixCell - Elk, 2008

Among the artworks shown at VOCA 2009 exhibition is Kohei Nawa new glue-drawing work while his beads work has been recently added to the collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Another Ph.D. of Kyoto City University.