SingartJapan In Creative Focus
If Aiko Tezuka’s current “Certainty/Entropy” exhibition at 3rd Floor – Hermes and Ikkan Art Gallery’s display of TeamLab’s “Universe of Water Particles” in April have wetted your appetite for all things Japanese, it will be well satiated this summer: 5 other galleries will be or have just started exhibiting an eclectic assortment of artworks either by artists from Japan or that have taken artistic inspiration from this land of the rising sun.
Kicking off this extravagant bonanza is Gillman Barracks-positioned Yeo Workshop’s “New Sensibilities in Sculpture & Painting”. Presently running till 27 July, its predominant Japanese segment features contemporary works of art by Atsushi Koyama, Taisuka Mohri and Haruki Ogawa; all of whom are renowned for their use of empirical experimentation and cutting edge techniques to challenge today’s digital and static images and push the boundaries of what we understand as painting and sculpture.
Close on its heels is Raffles Hotel Arcade-situated Kato Art Duo’s “Avant-Garde Japan” exhibition. On show till 25 July, it features masterpieces by leading Japanese abstract artists Kazuo Shiraga, Toshikatsu Endo, Toshiuiki Tanaka, Kumi Sugai, Chiyu Uemae, Masaaki Yamada and Yayoi Kusama; all avid members of the unconventional Gutai Group which Jiro Yoshihara founded in 1951.
Its well established reputation of focusing on the inner life an object has and thus its beauty that arises when it is damaged has enjoyed a recent renaissance; thanks to the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York for holding, between 2012 and 2013, a Gutai retrospective.
Extending this creatively artistic emphasis on damage to things found specifically in Japan are the upcoming exhibitions by yet another 2 galleries at Gillman Barracks; namely The Drawing Room and Ota Fine Arts.
The former’s month-long “Discordant” exhibition, starting on 27 June, will feature works of art by Filipino artist, Miguel Aquilizar. They draw incidental stimulus from this fact: since the 2011 tsunami, flooding and collapse of the Fukushima nuclear reactor, that resulted from a massive earthquake, the amount of 2nd hand trade between Japan and the Philippines has dramatically risen.
Rumour has it that the resulting ephemera arose from a mixture of sources – deceased estates, distraught families and the subsequent general debris; with a few of these items brought to Aquilizar’s homeland being suspected of holding vestiges of radiation.
Yet, his realization that these 2nd hand objects become rebranded as vintage in the Philippines drives him to collect a phalanx of 40 traditional-style Japanese figures – the geisha, the samurai and the nobleman as examples; and tweak each with equally Japanese accouterments or accessories – including paper umbrellas and floral bells – in deliberate over abundance.
Each artwork that arises from his strokes of extravaganza appears burdened by its cultural transition between its origin in East Asia and its new found home in South East Asia – almost trapped between 2 cultural oversimplifications; with Japan as a minimal, elegant society rooted in its traditions and the Philippines as a brash, maximalist conglomeration of island cultures and tribal groups.
Soon to be showcased by Ota Fine Arts, the solo exhibition, “We Are Home & Everywhere” is by renowned Singaporean artist, Zai Kuning; and where the survivors of the 2011 Fukushima natural and nuclear disaster become 1 vital source of empathetic musing.
Thus compelling Zai to creatively capture their heart-wrenching plight; of being dictated by external circumstances beyond their control – where losing a place to call home has driven them to insistently search for another: 1 that will give them a renewed sense of rest as they plough deeply to resolutely rebuild their shattered lives.
Scheduled to open from 27 June to 10 August, the show on Zai’s works resonates with his own personal journey as well – to attain artistic nirvana he has had to spend time living intermittently between Tokyo, Singapore and Riau. The consequential constant uprooting and moving from 1 place to another finds solace in his thought provoking creations: his works, thus, simultaneously reflect upon seamlessly personal and Japan’s still persistent issues of displacement and rupture.
Encapsulating this poetically and allegorically is Zai’s ingenious choice of crafting his to-be-exhibited art from bee wax – a material that has been perfected by nature to create a safe haven for ever industrious honeybees since time memorial.
Drawing snapshots from Japanese history will be STPI’s 2-months’ long “Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints” exhibition, commencing from 12 July. Juxtaposing classic ukiyo-e prints from master print makers, like Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Okumura Masanobu, Suzuki Harunobu, Torii Kiyonaga, Kitagawa Utamaro, Eishosai Choki, Keisai Eisen, Toril Kiyonobu, Okumura Toshinobu and Katsukawa Shunsho, with contemporary works that are inspired by the very same historic artists and their equally historical works, we will be seductively invited to delve deep into alluring works created by the power of the Edo period, as well as contemporary popular culture where continual change is the only lasting constant.
Spanning the 1700s and 1800s, the traditional ukiyo-e prints reveal Japan’s treasured obsessions of the period – from the myriad of luxuriant natural landscapes the grand masters have imaginatively captured, while travelling from one scenic spot to the next, to the charmingly beautiful women and exuberantly serious kabuki actors they had encountered on their journeys to the diversity of indulgent pleasures and pastimes each local commune had graciously afforded them.
In sharp contrast are the contemporary Edo pop redux created from the late 1900s to this present day by not only those born and bred in Japan: British Emily Allchurch’s transparencies on light boxes, in a rainbow of colours, succinctly capture the melding of the time honoured with the spanking new in modern day Japan while Hong Kong contemporary artist, Wilson Shieh, borrows the Edo style to humorously compose “Musical Families” – all of whom are obliviously in the nude.
Not to be outdone by outsiders, Masami Teraoka captures hilarious intimate moments where the Japanese today are confronted with mind blowing culture shock – all brought by them vacationing abroad; while Biduo Yamaguchi borrows heavily from the Edo pop style to lovingly sculpt ever so pliable wood into poignant masks that resonate with the cryptic emotions fleeting across the faces of kabuki actors.
