With the tools for reproducing images, text and sound now at the tips of all our grubby fingers, Aikawa Masaru has been keeping busy copying popular albums with meticulously hand-painted and drawn cover art and liner notes, along with burnt CDs with all the tracks duplicated using nothing but his own vocals.

The works of obsessively laborious affection are on show in Tokyo at Mori Gallery’s triennial exhibition of new Japanese art, Roppongi Crossing. Set up to resemble a CD shop, his listening booth comprises dozens of hand-made original fakes of albums by the likes of Kraftwerk, The Ramones, Primal Scream and Patti Smith (there’s even a hilarious a cappella rendering of Beethoven’s Symphony 9) as well as the artist’s helpful ‘tips’ printed on the wall:

- I can not play any instruments.

- There are many copy bands, but I am the best.

- I love music more than pictures and sculptures.

- I like hearing legends about the musicians.

- When I am creating my work, I can be the musicians whom I respect and love.

- I sometimes think that I am cool when I sing song ardently.

- To choose CDs from my favorites, was difficult but fun.

- I think the jackets of Heavy Metal CDs are cool.

- I like “Megadeth” more than “Metallica”.

- The good jacket has good songs on the CD.

- I hate “Greatest Hits”.

- I never buy songs from the “iTunes Music Store”.

- A lot of illegally copied CDs are sold on the streets of Asia .

- I am a Japanese, and a Japanese are good at mimicry.

- I think “iPods” are useful.

- I love the works of Andy Warhol.

- I sympathize with “D.I.Y” mind of the punk / hard core.

- It is possible to listen to my song only in the exhibition.

- The works of CDs are duplications, but nevertheless are myself, and also my original work of art.

Top image by Stefan Riekles, others by Amelia Groom.

Modernism’s doctrine of functionalism put the ornamental in a corner and spat at it, but apparently the decorative is making a quiet comeback. The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo recently brought together ten contemporary Japanese artists under the idea of Neo-Ornamentalism, for an exhibition that had echoes of Buddhist sand mandalas – with Motoi Yamamoto’s temporary 12 by 15 metre ‘salt painting’ on the museum’s floor (below) – as well as European rococo and the repetitive patterns of Islamic arts.

Image credits: 1. Katsuyo AOKI, Predictive dream Ⅸ, 2009, Private collection, Courtesy of Röntogenwerke. 2. Motoi YAMAMOTO, Labyrinth, Installation view at Force of Nature, Artist in Residence, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC, U.S.A. 2006, Salt. 3. Atsuo OGAWA, cutter knife skating, 2009, Engraving on soap. 4. Tomoko SHIOYASU, Cutting Insights, 2008, Paper, TAKAHASHI COLLECTION, Courtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Photo by Keizo Kioku. 5. Hiroshi MIZUTA, An apartment in gray, 2009, Oil on canvas, Artist’s collection, Courtesy　of　ARTCOURT Gallery. 6. Junichi MORI, minawa, 2008, Wood, Courtesy of void+. 7. Kentaro YOKOUCHI, book-tear, 2008, Dye and medium, satin, Collection of Museum Contemporary Art Tokyo.

The prolific director / actor / film editor / stand-up comedian / TV presenter / author / poet / painter / sculptor / videogame designer / general no good layabout Beat Takeshi Kitano has taken over the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Described as a “series of dreams”, the show comprises games, inventions, alternative scientific theories, a puppet theatre, paintings, objects and videos in a temporary space designed for the young and young at heart.

In Australia there is currently a retrospective of Kitano’s films for APT6 at GOMA in Brisbane, and his biggest blockbuster Zatôichi is featured at the AGNSW’s current program of Japanese films.

Images courtesy Fondation Cartier

Some samples of Akihiko Amano’s work, which according to the artist is about looking at the art of language, and the language of art. His recent solo exhibition 918 at Magical Artroom in Tokyo presented several ink and acrylic paintings depicting his own invented alphabet, described as an attempt to to explore the perceived impossibility of escaping language, even in abstract art.

Akihiko now also has his recent sculptures on show at Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo – alongside the work of Kuribara Morimoto – as part of the latest in the Imaginary Museum of the O-Collection: Magical Museum Tour series (see first image below).

Granting public access to the extensive private collection of the Magical Artroom Director Satoshi Okada, the O-Collection series makes evident the patron’s unique eye for new developments in contemporary art, and his unwavering dedication to supporting young Japanese artists at the very early stages of their careers.

“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.”

Written in the 1930’s, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki essay In Praise of Shadows was a sort of defense for traditional Japanese aesthetics, which he saw as being under threat from the excessively lit modern world. All the highly refined traditional Japanese arts – such as laquerware or noh theatre – he said, should be appreciated under dim lights, but as the West is forever striving for progress it searches for greater clarity and more dazzling light. Despite all the flashing neon and lasers of Japan today, Jun’ichirō might actually be pleasantly surprised to find that the Japanese still hold that particular sensitivity to subdued aesthetics, and the quality of the subtle interplay between light and shadows has not, as he feared, been forgotten.

A recent exhibition at the National Art Center Tokyo placed the work of abstract painter Yoko Matsumoto (b. 1936) and photographer Rika Noguchi (b. 1971) side by side in a show called The Light. Though from different generations, both of these contemporary artists have been primarily concerned with the difficult challenge of capturing light, either in paint or on film. Matsumoto painted exclusively with pink acrylics for several decades before recently moving to green tones and oil paints, and her large-scale canvases have a textured luminosity that is lost in the reproductions here. Noguchi works exclusively with natural light in her photography, often directly documenting the biggest light of them all, the sun, with a pinhole camera. The show received some criticism for putting these two seemingly disconnected artists together under the possibly tenuous link of ‘capturing light’, but it served as an interesting documentation of the great sensitivity to light that still runs strong in contemporary Japan.

[Image credits: 1. Copyright Rika Noguchi. 2. Yoko Matsumoto, Light Shining in Wilderness I, 1992, acrylic on canvas, 182x182 cm,photo: YAMAMOTO Tadasu, courtesy of Hino Gallery. 3. Rika Noguchi, The Sun #23, 2008, C-print, 40.3x60.3 cm, courtesy the artist and Gallery Koyanagi. 3. Yoko Matsumoto, Light Shining on the Horizon, 2008, oil on canvas, 193x259 cm, photo: YAMAMOTO Tadasu, courtesy of Hino Gallery. 4. Rika Noguchi, I Dreamt of Flying 2 #1, 2009, C-print, 125x187.5cm, courtesy artist and Gallery Koyanagi.]

Picture books, wolves, red shoes, forests, metamorphosis, Buddha and traditional Japanese architecture are the the main recurring motifs in Tomoko Konoike’s mythologically-derived work that sets out to examine man’s relationship with nature …

Meiro Koizumi is best known for his video art, but here’s a peek into his collage work. By painting onto magazine pages he changes XXX into G-rated scenes, but the transformation is never quite complete. Whether his women are depicted with pretty dresses in candy-coloured settings or as grey twin towers, there’s always a hint of the image’s naughty past showing through beneath the surface. If censorship was always this artful, I’d be all for it.

Koizumi’s first solo museum exhibition is on at Mori Gallery, Tokyo until November 8.

“But you are still thinking in terms of a life with a real face. The mask does not deceive and is not deceived. How about putting on a new mask, turning over a new leaf, and starting another life?”

(Kobo Abe, The Face of Another)

A look back at a look book from 2006, marking the first collection from Fugahum; a fashion label which frequently crosses over into the realms of  visual art and  instillation.

After 6 years as a designer with Yohji Yamamoto, Asuka Yamamoto formed Fugahum with Akiyoshi Mishima, an artist, art director, graphic designer, film director and VJ. Their work together is based on the notion of a fictional nation named ‘Fugahum’, and their aesthetic nestles somehwere at the boarders of street and fantasy; gothic and futuristic; macarbe and beautiful. An interview with Mishima (whose paintings feature here) about his work and the Fugahum nation can be found here.

Do blank canvases make you nervous? Why not make like Ushio Shinohara and show them who’s boss with a few good punches in their blank faces?!

Shinohara, who is affectionately known as Gyu-chan (‘The Bull’), was a prominent figure in Japan’s post-war avant-garde movements, especially as a regular participant in the legendary Yomiuri Independent Exhibitions in the ’50s and ’60s, a founding member of the Neo Dadaism Organizers, and a pioneer of ‘junk-art’ assemblage. His recent boxing paintings have made clear that his subversive spirit and intense energy are as potent as ever.

Images courtesy of the artist and Ethan Cohen Fine Arts