Contemporary Cityscapes vol.2
“Contemporary Cityscapes” is a program that presents contemporary urban landscapes through a range of methods of expression.
I visited the A/D Gallery in Roppongi Hills, where the second installment in the series is currently on view.
Wataru Ito
An artist who makes elaborate three-dimensional works out of paper.
This piece is one you often come across in other group shows too.
Naoya Inose
Naoya Inose contributed just a single piece.
The most recent time I saw his work was as part of the Art Fair Tokyo satellite program at Arts Chiyoda 3331. He also showed at DOMANI.
When it comes to painting landscape, he must be one of the very best at it right now. Touching on environmental concerns, he depicts realistic scenes alongside a taut sense of the future. His quietly resonant works, as if trying to say something important, are so rich you’ll want to keep looking.
At ¥500,000 for a size 12 canvas, the prices seem to be climbing compared with a while back. This is an artist who makes you want to collect a piece before he becomes out of reach.
Yukino Ohmura
Someone I’ve been running into a lot in group shows lately is Yukino Ohmura. I saw her at the Shutoko exhibition in 2017, and most recently the “Ah!!rt Exhibition” left a strong impression. Her distinctive practice — drawing with round stickers — must be why she keeps getting invited.
Mutsumi Sakamoto
Mutsumi Sakamoto’s works are minutely detailed drawings made with pen on paper. They have a presence that felt like they were coming right at me.
Daisuke Tajima
The gigantic 4-meter work was by Daisuke Tajima. He depicts a scene of tightly packed high-rises — a landscape you’d never see in everyday life. The sheer scale is astonishing, but standing quietly in front of it I felt struck by an odd sensation, as if I could actually imagine the urban activity going on somewhere on the other side.
Yuzuru Terui
Yuzuru Terui was the artist who left the strongest impression on me. I had seen his work before, but hearing about the story behind its making really drew me in.
The tidy grid of dots across the surface makes them look like they were machine-made, but they’re actually crafted meticulously by hand.
The technique goes like this: small mirrored pieces are attached to the support, and on top of them, a UV-curing resin is placed in half-dome droplets, one by one, with a syringe. Look closely and you can see your own reflection in each tiny mirrored dot.
Meanwhile, the small pieces on the counter use polarizing film in place of mirrors, so the color shifts depending on the viewer’s angle. Watching the colors change so dramatically is enormously fun.
Keita Mori
An artist whose method is to fix thread onto paper to make a work. The continuous lines telegraph the painstaking process involved.
Hidenori Yamaguchi
The virtuoso works are by Hidenori Yamaguchi. They look like sepia-toned monochrome photographs, and his handling of bokeh is superb. The urban landscapes rendered in ink wash are meticulously precise yet warm — landscape paintings with a sense of movement.
Summary
Every artist is a heavyweight, and the works were thoroughly satisfying to look at. Personally I would have loved to see more work by Inose, so there was a slight sense of wanting more, but bringing this caliber of work together under a single theme produces a bracing tension. If there’s another edition, I’d love to see a different roster of artists next time.
