The Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibition has become a perennially anticipated event on the art aficionado’s calendar. Celebrating its 68th season in 2020, the exhibition serves as a surprisingly convenient opportunity to review an expansive selection of work by a generation of artists who are poised to become leading voices in the Japanese and international art worlds. Miho Sauser, a prolific editor whose work appears regularly in arts and culture magazines the world over, reports on the recent exhibition that was concentrated in a handful of venues around Ueno Park. Drawing on her encyclopedic knowledge of modern art, ceramics, architecture, and design, Sauser offers a curated selection of her personal picks from the graduating class of 2020. Read on to discover all the promising new artists to keep on your radar, in part one of a special two-part spotlight on the Tokyo University of the Arts.
Art at its purest
Outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, host of the undergraduate exhibition. The M.A. exhibitions were conducted across the Tokyo University of the Arts campus and within the University Art Museum. Works were displayed in groups according to department of study, encompassing Nihonga (Japanese-style painting), oil painting, sculpture, and more.
Student
exhibitions present even the most jaded critic with a rare opportunity to experience
art in its purest form. Unencumbered by reputation and other similar judgment-clouding
preconceptions, the viewer is given carte balance, free to approach each
artwork as a proverbial mirror that reflects her own tastes and provides a
litmus test to better understand her own psychological frame of mind in the
moment. The Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibition was
certainly no exception. Of course, given the sheer volume of work on display,
it inevitably took a bit of searching to find the diamonds in the rough.
However, the overwhelming majority of works were undoubtedly the products of
invigorating passion, and offered a refreshingly innovative perspective. As
always, there was nary a dull moment at this year’s exhibition.
All told, the exhibition consisted of 370 works, created by students who recently completed their B.A. and M.A. degrees at the university. At such a scale, it would take multiple days to fully examine all of the works. Although I tried to give each work its fair due, I may have missed a masterpiece or two in my race against the clock. Nonetheless, here are my impressions of a few particularly memorable student works, with an emphasis on the exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.
Transcending borders
■East meets West in this design student’s tour de force
Fortune comes. Every day is happy. | OOSHIMA Rika This ambitious large-scale work (measuring nearly three meters wide and two meters tall) is a cornucopia of celebratory symbolism, with a dragon god, butterflies, clouds, and dancing children on parade. The artist melds Japanese and Western painting traditions to curiously captivating effect, which is all the more remarkable considering the artist is a student in the Department of Design. Although not majoring in painting per se, she has received a number of awards over her time at the university. Working primarily in acrylics, she also incorporates mineral pigments, suihi (soil/clay pigments), and gold leaf. Her attentive use of color – as evinced by the dancers’ delicate hair, lips, and earlobes – is particularly beautiful.
■Oils spilling over with music and reportage
Folklore of the new adaptation no.5: Karouto Yuraitan | YOSHIDA Mikiho Inspired by an old custom in the Tohoku region, where a blushing bride’s trousseau is said to have included a large wooden chest (that would eventually serve as her own coffin), this mixed-media collection harkens back to the writings of famed folklorist Kunio Yanagita. The artist, Mikihiko Yoshida, traveled to Tohoku to perform preparatory field research regarding the local views on life and death. She subsequently expressed these findings in a textual parable of her own, along with a painting that blends reality with surrealist fantasy. The artist’s rich vernacular easily transcended the purview of oil painting, finding expression in a veritable mixed-media installation replete with textual reportage, allegorical narrative, music, and even an antique wooden chest.
■Painting as patchwork
cargo island | YAMASAKI Yuki After viewing some of the nihonga (Japanese-style) paintings on display, I began to notice a fair amount of overlap, with a few common themes emerging in terms of color and texture. However, this work by Yuki Yamasaki stood out from the pack. The geometric motifs in the center of the painting (ostensibly the titular “cargo island”) suggest animals and trees, while the surrounding sea is populated with ships. Perhaps applied using 3D fabric paint, the patterns seem almost embroidered. While, on the one hand, it resembled a primitive cave painting, I felt the work simultaneously spoke to modern design sensibilities in terms of graphics and textiles.
■A ceramic microcosm
Maximum scope=minimum scale | MOTOBA Aoi As the artist explains, “Through my continual study and throwing of pottery, I seek to express the interrelationship between our world and the vast energy of the cosmos.” The work is a poignant reminder of how pottery is, in a sense, the manifest embodiment of planet earth, the elemental fusion of soil, water, wood, fire, ash, air, and heat. To a certain degree the product of chance, the interaction between glaze and flame ensures that each piece is inherently as uniquely varied as a natural landscape. The artist demonstrated a novel approach to ceramics, slightly askew from the codified inherited genres of traditional craft, industrial/lifestyle craft, and craft as fine art.
Art as commentary on modern society
■Architectural life and death, as seen in landmarks and ruins
the bird has flown | SUZUKI Nozomu This work by architecture student Nozomu Suzuki questions what it means to both produce and destroy, exploring architectural ruins as symbols of decay, and historic architectural remains as loci of the eternal. Specifically, the work is set in the Okinawan village of Nakagusuku, on an outcrop affording vistas of both a World Heritage Site (the footprint of Nakagusuku Castle) and a modern abandoned ruin (the former Nakagusuku Hotel). As the story goes, the hotel’s owner went bankrupt before the hotel reached completion, and the hotel was fated to stand as a skeletal reminder of the day construction halted in 1975. The bird has flown project is a proposal to resuscitate the hotel, preserving the decaying structure’s outer skin, while fleshing out the building with a design that considers the relationship between archaeological landmarks and a region’s local identity. The project also serves as a timely antithesis that anticipates the impending glut of unused buildings that may await in the wake of the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
■Three canvases, infinite stories
District 3 | LEE Yegi This triptych was created by a second-generation Korean in Japan who traveled to the ancestral homeland to research Korea’s history and indigenous religions. The work’s subtitle, daldongnae, refers to the hilltop “moon towns” that were built by refugees in the aftermath of the Korean War. Although the name suggests a romantic hamlet bathed in moonlight, in reality, they were the grim byproduct of poverty and hardship. Moon villages were built atop mountains out of necessity, as these inconvenient tracts of land were the only unoccupied spaces in cities where poor squatters could take refuge. Before even reading the artist statement and learning of the artist’s background, my instinctive first impression of the work was that it reminded me of the film Parasite. (Although the film had not yet been released in Japan at the time of the exhibition, I had just recently watched it on an international flight.) The longer I looked at the paintings, the more secrets they seemed to reveal.
■An analogue seal of approval in the digital age
Hand having fun | NOBUKAWA Minami Hanko, name seals conventionally stamped in place of signatures on official documents, have increasingly become an outmoded vestige of an analogue age. Going through the redundant rigmarole of signing, then stamping, each and every dotted line upon those dreaded visits to City Hall, one can’t help but wonder when the hanko will become a thing of the past. Of course, there is an argument to be made for preserving the hanko for what it represents in Japanese culture. In this spirit, I think art is an ideal vector for updating the hanko, and allowing it to evolve to suit modern culture. Visitors to Minami Nobukawa’s interactive installation were able to try out a wide range of handmade stamps of varying sizes. The artist had evidently created the work in the hope that it might remind visitors of the joy of art. The organic forms of these stamps were certainly a joy to see.
The future of artistic handcraft
■In praise of shadows and fine lines
effortless | LEE Mari Featuring sublimely intricate lines etched with a scriber (a hand tool used to mark lines on metal by making shallow scratches in the material’s surface), this chased copper sculpture is a fine example of the openwork technique. The simple, graceful form produces lovely shadows that warrant appreciation for the piece in its own right, as a stand-alone, decorative object. I would also be tempted to use the piece as a functional container, for example, to enjoy it on a daily basis. All things considered, the title, “effortless,” belies the amount of meticulous care that clearly went into the creation of this piece.
■Form follows technique
Sustainable sense | KOBAYASHI Mari I imagine this rather large and intricate silver piece was quite time- and labor-intensive. The work is an impressive testament to the paramount importance of hard-earned technique. Whether working in handcrafts or, indeed, any other artistic medium, technique is vital to successful execution of an idea, and gives physical form to flashes of creative inspiration.
Text/Photos: Miho Sauser
→Continue to Part 2
Miho Sauser Editor. Graduate of the Sophia University Department of History. Former deputy editor-in-chief of Esquire Japan. Having spent nearly a decade in Shanghai, Sauser currently serves as an active contributor to media outlets in both Japan and China. Her specialties include modern art, architecture, design, and traditional craftwork. To date, Sauser has interviewed numerous “living national treasures,” such as Kazumi Murose and Kozo Kato, as well as over 100 notable craft artisans including Masanobu Ando, Akito Akagi, and Ryuij Mitani. Interviews with contemporary artists include Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mika Ninagawa, Nobuyoshi Araki, Yoshihiko Ueda, Yoshitomo Nara, Hiroshi Senju, and Kohei Nawa. In the architectural design realm, she has interviewed Kengo Kuma, Kenya Hara, Naoto Fukasawa, Kenmei Nagaoka, and many others. Sauser is also the author of Chéngshí de shǒuyì (“Honest Handcrafts”), an engaging introduction to the world of Japanese craftwork.
68th Tokyo University of the Arts Graduation Works Exhibitions
Dates: Tuesday, January 28th through Sunday, February 2nd, 2020 Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (Undergraduate Exhibitions) Tokyo University of the Arts Campus/University Art Museum (Graduate School Exhibitions) https://diploma-works.geidai.ac.jp
