Apparently crystal formation of frozen vapour (snow) is under-researched. Some of the most valuable observations were done in the 1930s by the Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya (above), who turned his attention to the study of snow crystals after experiencing difficulty finding work in the field of nuclear physics. He was the first to grow artificial snow crystals under controlled conditions, and was also pioneering in snow crystal classification. His beautiful 1954 publication Snow Crystals: Natural and Artificial contains the bulk of his research.

Fast forward a few decades and it makes some sense that the scientist’s daughter Fujiko Nakaya has developed a long-term relationship with artificial fog. Living in New York in the 1960s Nakaya mingled with the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) group before going on to create ‘the world’s first fog sculpture’ at the 1970 Osaka International Fair. Since then she has worked with the opaque but intangible medium of fog for installations, sculptures and performances around the world, including major commissions at the Australian National Gallery and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. She is also credited with opening Video Gallery SCAN, Japan’s first media art gallery, in Harajuku in the 80s, and she has organised biannual TV/video festivals in Tokyo for many years.

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

Soap bubbles, inflatable alter egos and crystal baubles all feature amongst the handful of artists representing Japan in the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, currently showing at GOMA in Brisbane.

A rising star of contemporary Japanese art, Shinji Ohmaki has two standout works featured – Liminal Air, an immersive and highly tactile environment of clever artificial light and thousands of knotted white cords suspended at various heights (second image below); and the dramatic Memorial Rebirth, which comprises 50 bubble machines blowing 10,000 bubbles a minute into the sky (last image below). Like all his work, they are based on notions of infinity and the transience of all things, relating back to traditional Japanese aesthetics with motifs of repetition, emptiness, ephemerality and ambiguity.

One of the most photographed works in the show is PixCell-Elk#2, a 2.5 metre high taxidermied elk covered in glass, acrylic and crystal baubles of various sizes by Kohei Nawa (fourth image below, detail above), a sculptor who is primarily interested in the interaction between form and surface, and how we come to understand what we see.

Examining our relationships with material objects in the virtual/digital realm, PixCell-Elk#2 is part of Nawa’s ongoing ‘PixCell’ series whereby he creates sculptures based on images returned from web search engines. His objects (such as taxidermied animals) are sourced from online auction sites before being enveloped in skins of glass beads which resemble computer pixels as well as molecular structures, magnifying and distorting the object’s form in different parts to various degrees.

The most famous of the Japanese artists included is the superflat illustrator and sculpture Yoshitomo Nara, who has a specially commissioned joint collaboration with the Osaka-based architecture and design firm graf featured. Using reclaimed timbers and found materials, the YNG (Yoshitomo Nara Graf) space houses a selection of Nara’s iconic child-like drawings and objects (third image below).

Also of note is a multichannel video installation from animation and film artist Hiraki Sawa (in collaboration with sound artist Dale Berning) that was commissioned for APT (fifth image below), and an extensive retrospective of director, actor, author, comedian, artist and cult television personality Takeshi Kitano’s directorial film work (first image below).

By no means a broad look at what is happening in contemporary Japanese art, the five Japanese artists here (situated amongst a total of over 100 artists from Asian countries in APT6) are well worth devoting some time to if you are going to be in Brisbane between now until April 2010.

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Images: 1. Kohei Nawa / Japan b.1975 / PixCell-Elk#2 (detail) 2009 / Work created with the support of the Fondation d’enterprise Hermės / Courtesy the artist and SCAI, Tokyo / Photograph: Seiji Toyonaga. 2. Production still from Kantoku: Banzai! (Glory to the Filmmaker) 2007 / Director: Takeshi Kitano / 35mm, colour and black and white, Dolby Digital, 108 minutes, Japan, Japanese (English subtitles) / Image courtesy: Celluloid Dreams. 3.Shinji Ohmaki / Japan b. 1971 /Liminal Air – Descend – 2007 – 09 / Installation at: APT6 / Courtesy: The artist and Tokyo Gallery + BTAP. 4. YNG (Yoshitomo Nara and graf) / Y.N.G.M.S. (Y.N.G’s mobile studio) (detail) 2009 / Commissioned for APT6 and the Queensland Art Gallery Collection with assistance from Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo / Purchased 2009 with funds from the Bequest of Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery. 5. Kohei Nawa / Japan b.1975 / PixCell-Elk#2 2009 / Work created with the support of the Fondation d’enterprise Hermės / Courtesy the artist and SCAI, Tokyo / Photograph: Seiji Toyonaga. 6. Hiraki Sawa / O 2009 / Commissioned for APT6 / Courtesy: The artist, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, and James Cohan Gallery, New York. 7. Shinji Ohmaki / Japan b. 1971 / Memorial rebirth 2008 / Installation at: APT6 / Courtesy: The artist and Tokyo Gallery + BTAP

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.

A cave-like structure that appears both open and closed, rough and smooth, heavy and floating, the onishimaki + hyakudayuki space currently open at The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo changes its form dramatically as you navigate through and around it.

At just 26 and 27 years old, this up-and-coming duo have been getting a lot of attention for their proposals of architectural spaces that trigger real physical sensations. Situated in the Museum’s Media Court space (which is open to the public free of change), this recent commission responds to the angular grey concrete austerity of its surrounds while seeming to have landed there from another dimension entirely.

Continuing until January next year, the display marks the fourth in The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s MOT × Bloomberg Public ‘Space’ Projects, an initiative aimed at supporting young artists and expanding public access to art.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

Just as King Arthur’s round table went against hierarchical structure by abolishing the notion of the head of the table and ensuring everyone who sat there had equal status, SANAA’s building for the The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa uses the form of the circle to create an integrated, community-oriented centre for contemporary art; one with flexible spacial definition, multiple points of access and a focus on inclusively and participation.

When I wrote about SANAA several months ago during their exhibition in Sydney, I mentioned how their work prefers gradual curvature over dividing walls and corners, synthesises interior and exterior spaces, and emphases transparency, reflections, ambiguity, flexibility and contemplation. The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art seems to be the perfect embodiment of all these things – situated in a park in the heart of the city, the transparent glass surface gives a sense of openness and means the interior and some of the artworks are visible from the outside, rather than separated from everyday life. The subtle reflections in the curved glass further integrate the outside into the inside and vice versa – and courtyards and skylights throughout keep visitors connected with the world outside even when they are in the middle of the building.

Anyone can wonder in and hang out in any of the public areas which have lots of seating, and while the temporary exhibitions usually have a fee there are several ‘people’s gallery’ spaces that are open to the public free of charge. There is a well stocked library and magazine reading room free to the public, as well as a children’s play room, a café that stays open into the night, and many public programs.

The art is worthy of note too. A favourite amongst the premanant collection is Leandro Erlich’s Swimming Pool, which seems perfectly suited to the building with its playful defiance of insideness and outsideness. The perpetual rain (for which Kanazawa is renouned) last weekend had a beautiful and hypnotic effect on the top of the pool from the inside (see below).

Other artists often create site specific works that interact with the building, such as the Tokyo-based Suda Yoshihiro’s easily overlooked Weeds which are incredibly realistic looking fine carved and painted wood sculptures that pop out of cracks in the concrete ground (see below). The temporary exhibitions feature a rotation of exciting names from Japan and abroad, too. I caught the end of the Tadanori Yokoo retrospective and opening at the end of November is a solo show from Olafur Eliasson that will run simultaneously with the survey of his work which is at the MCA in Sydney from December.

Currently celebrating its 5^th year, The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art remains an extraordinary feature of the quiet, remote and inclement town of Kanazawa.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

One of several art spaces that have in recent years started taking advantage of the relatively cheap rent in Tokyo’s garment district, Gallery αM (pronounced ‘alpha em’) is enjoying their new permanent home in the quiet basement space of an old building near Bakurocho Station.

Ran by Musashino Art University, αM is currently celebrating the university’s 80^th anniversary with a yearlong program of exhibitions curated by Kazuo Amano. With 8 shows in total, the series is called Metamorphosis – Objects Today, and it aims to examine the work of contemporary sculpture artists who use or misuse materials in new ways. Whether it is wood, plastic, fabric or found objects, all of the artists in the series are identified as working with innovative transformation of materials and objects.

Currently showing is the fifth volume in the series, with Kyotaro Hakamata’s recent creations using plexiglas and other materials. Next in line will be up-and-comer Teppei Kaneuji, with Kengo Kito and Masanori Handa to follow.

It’s definitely worth checking out this space. In the same building you’ll also find Foli Gallery and Art Eat, a café/gallery that serves organic Lebanese food – and within walking distance are many other interesting new spaces including Cashi Gallery, which opened just over a year ago and uses the freezer of the staff refrigerator as one of the exhibition ‘rooms’.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

What if the Power Rangers reformed as a Japanese hiphop crew with degrees in sculpture? Taku Obata’s new show at Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo, It’s Just Begun, suggests the result would be rather awesome.

Obata formed the hiphop group UNITYSELECTIONS (who performed at the exhibition opening on Saturday night) in the late 90s, and since then he has been refining their tongue-almost-in-cheek styles of dance, music, street art and design, in recent years setting up the sister project HIPHOP SENTAI BBOYGER. Meanwhile he also graduated in sculpture at Tokyo National University, and is proving himself to be as skilled with the chisel as he is with the mic.

His background in dance and hiphop has evidently given him great insight into the form of the human body and the way it moves; the wooden sculptures currently on show have a remarkable sense of motion and energy about them.

See more from UNITYSELECTIONS here.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

“Bones are located in the depths. Plastic covers the surface. Whiteness is a common feature that facilitates movement between inside and outside.”

Bones, plastic and whiteness are some of Teppei Kaneuji’s favourite things. Liquid, towers and stains are a few others. The young artist’s work with white resin on everyday plastic commodities relates not only to the whiteness of bones being brought to the outside, but to his fascination with snow. When he started out by covering found objects in white starch powder, he was inspired by how snow can make our familiar surroundings foreign, unifying all things under its blanket and stripping common objects of their meaning and purpose.

Though less well known, his work with paper and collage is equally compelling. An accidental coffee stain on a page was the catalyst for his Muddy Stream from Mug collage series: as a triumph over the mishap he cut out more stains on paper and composed them in meticulous and systematic ways, thereby making them no longer accidents. These then became sculptural paper works, going from 3D liquid to 2D stains on paper, and then back to three dimensions in a new solid form.

In a similar vein, his collages and sculptures comprising cut-outs of moisturiser and other liquid substances from magazine advertisements also confuse two dimensionality and three dimensionality – just as his assemblages with white resin (applied as liquid which then sets) appear like either frozen icicles or melting drops; once again somewhere in between liquid and solid.

His exhibition Melting City / Empty Forest at Yokohama Museum of Art earlier this year made him the youngest artist the Museum has featured in a solo show to date, and since then he has been in high demand. Now for the first time a taste of his work has arrived in Australia, with a series of drawings and a video instillation (above) at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney. Go check it out, I have an inkling we’ll be seeing a lot more from Teppei in the years to come.

Exhibit A is a moss and indigo artwork at the Shibuya Tokyo Wonder Site café that has been gradually evolving for the last eight months. The artist Takashi Kuribayashi worked with his collective Coceworks and the indigo dyeing art duo Litmus to set it up, and its ongoing transformation is documented via video footage and photographs inside the café, as well as in the blogosphere. The project is part of the Tokyo Wonder Site environmental project series, and several events and workshops are scheduled to coincide.

But now for a compulsory montage glance over Kuribayashi’s more general awesomeness. Besides moss and ferns his other running motifs are seals and penguins, which he often uses in latex form for his instillations where audiences are invited to peer through walls or ceilings into fragments of alternative aquatic worlds. With his childlike sense of wonder and silliness he achieves a supreme quality of tranquillity in his work, which is always refreshingly free of cynicism.

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 …

Chu Enoki’s first public performance was a Naked Happening in 1970 which involved him walking through the middle of a main street in Tokyo with the Expo ‘70 logo sunburned onto his bare chest, by way of protesting the huge heavily branded event that was taking place in Japan at the time.

A performance work based on the simple idea of going about his everyday live for four years with one side of his head and body entirely removed of hair, Shaving Half of My Hair took place between 1977 and 1981. Around the same time he started In Everyday Life Multi, whereby he converted his private home into a public domain, inviting anyone to come and see his art and his domestic life; and for his Bar Rose Chu work in 1979 he transformed a gallery space into an intimate bar where he interacted with guests as a moustached hostess in drag.

Such public interventions as these sought to shake up the divides between public and private spaces, art and the every day, spectatorship and participation. In more recent years the artist has moved away from body and performance based works towards sculpture and instillation that utilise found objects and materials including weaponry, ammunition and industrial detritus. His RPM-1200, pictured below, saw a sci-fi city skyline emerge out of highly polished junk metal and old drill bits.

For more on Chu Enoki see his website or get hold of the book Everyday Life/Art: Chu Enoki.

My how the world would be dull without magnetic fields. No microphones, no rockets, no doorbells, no compasses, no cassettes, no credit cards, no magnet space wheels, no passive aggressive fridge notes between housemates, and no liquid magnetic art from Sachiko Kodama.

After graduating with a degree in physics, Kodama went on to study art, focusing on computer and holography art for her doctorate. She is now associate professor at University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. These pulsating sculptures are the result of her ongoing experiments with ferrofluid, a magnetic liguid that was invented in the late ‘60s by NASA. The mesmerising Morpho Towers: Two Standing Spirals came from a collaborative project with Yasushi Miyajima, who created the musical score the forms are dancing to.

Kodama says that while these works were created with state-of-the art electromagnetic technology, they are inspired by natural phenomena like the ocean, tornados, plant life, sea urchins and rhythms of breath. She imagines that in the future, artificial intelligence may be applied to such materials and techniques as hers, and “if this becomes reality, computers that mimic natural forms may offer a more calm, relaxing and comfortable user experience.”

Kenji Yanobe’s plastic, metal and steel sculptures embody the same industrial-futuristic aesthetic that sends Japanese consumers (and quite frankly, the rest of us) into a spending frenzy. Yet Kenji’s mission is much darker than the likes of Bearbrick or Mr TTT: all of the artist’s creations are built from a nuclear holocaust. Not however, the one that affected Japan 20 years before his birth, but one that continues to radiate from television screens all over the country.

Much of Kenji’s work is made with reference to the otaku generation; kids whose worlds are saturated in comics, television and robotics. Such mediums are of course entertainment, but their stories are frequently concerned with the darker side of human existence; one that denies its humanity in favour of power. In such media, the machine straddles both sides of the divide, as both a human ally and destructor.

Growing up with this kind of stimulus, Kenji’s 3D works are at once cute and chilling. For his current exhibition at bld gallery in Tokyo, Kenji has created an installation of Mini Toyarans, based on his iconic Giant Toyaran sculpture. Part man, part child and dressed in a nuclear suit, Toyaran is modelled on a ventriloquist’s dummy used by Kenji’s father. Running until August 9, the exhibition features a legion of Mini Toyaran. This small army might stand at 10% of the size of their predecessor, but they are 100% as fascinating (and frightening!).

Hand sculpted and flawlessly designed, Hakusan’s porcelain is iconic in both its form and history. The company’s legacy began over eight generations ago in a small factory based in Hanami, Nagasaki.

The traditional porcelain manufacturer made its name in 1956 by employing designer Mori Masahiro (1927-2005) in 1956. The innovative partnership merged craftsmanship with design, pioneering a new approach to the creative process. Mori was a trained industrial designer and specialised ceramicist. After graduating from the Tama University of Arts in Tokyo, he joined Hakusan and went on to revolutionise porcelain homewear in Japan and abroad. His G-type Soy Sauce Bottle won a Good Design prize in 1960 and his creations for the company continued to influence ceramicists for generations to come.

Mori’s vision of simple, lifestyle products came to define the Hakusan brand as practical and intuitive. Even though he left the company in 1978, Hakusan continued to produce his work. Possibly one of the company’s most beautiful creations were humble mugs now known as ‘Fancy Cups’. These were designed for the blind, and feature groove patterns that mirror the grasp of a human hand. Hakusan’s more recent foray into the creation of collectible porcelain animals such as cats, birds and other seriously cute critters ensure that its legacy will remain both innovative and relevant to yet another generation.

Hakusan has a store on Omotesando Dori, Tokyo and is available in Australia through Via Alley.