The Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art and the Haifa Museum of Art organized in Haifa what is probably the most important exhibition of contemporary art from Japan ever hold in Israel with the occasion of the 60 years since Japan and Israel established diplomatic relations. Designed in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami by two art collectors from England and Japan the exhibition provides a wide perspective of the modern art in Japan, bringing here artists from several generations who express themselves in different genres, styles, and materials. The result is a fascinating window open to a world of art which combines tradition with innovation, revolt and respect to the predecessors, all in a permanent dialog between the Eastern and Western cultural values. Here are my impressions about a few works by some of the artists exposed at Tikotin which I visited today. These are only some of the artists exposed and unfortunately I did not have time to get to the Haifa Museum of Art where the rest of the exhibition and artists are being shown. Maybe in the coming weeks, as the exhibition is open until December 15.
source http://www.tmja.org.il/
Makoto Aida mixes in Aichan-BONSAI the traditional Bonsai trees in an octopus structure with human female heads, the result is disconcerting.
source http://www.azito-art.com/homma-takashi/tokyo-suburbia-boy.html
Takashi Homma photographs the suburbs of Tokyo, combining industrial structures, depersonalized lodgments and highways with portraits of humans, most of them young people who seem to be lost in the landscape deprived of any cultural identity.
source http://www.anninaroescheisen.com/art/contemporary-art/motohiko-odani/
The fate and extreme manifestations of the young is also the theme of two of the three works of Motohiko Odani exposed in the exhibition. One is a video criticizing the sub-human teenage TV shows in the 90s, the other two are in porcelain and the material that must respect gravity to protect its fragility is dealt with in an original manner. Crushed to the ground in the work above, suspended but tense in the other work in the exhibition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB–DXH02mI
(video source mouffettefatale)
Yoko Ono (yes, the wife of …) is present with two of the provocative video works filming happenings that made her known even in the pre-Lennon fame years. Cut Piece filmed in 1964 shows the audiences cutting in pieces her dress, she repeated the happening about 40 years later.
source http://japan-photo.info/blog/2010/05/09/rink-kawauchi-lieko-shiga-exhibitions-lectures-at-photobook-festival-kassel-germany/
Lieko Shiga asked friends from different places in the world to find the darkest and most lightened places in their neighborhoods. Then he came and made pictures in these places, he then printed the photos, brought modifications to the prints and photographed them again. This is the technique used to give birth to the Canary cycle.
source http://www.asianartnewspaper.com/article/yuken-teruya
The last work I will write about is Yuken Teruya’s You-I, You-I. The painting of a kimono, one of the most specific Japanese art genre combines fauna and floral motives from his native island of Okinawa with models inspired by the recent history of the island. This beautiful work can be used to describe the essence of the exhibition.