Tokyo Weekender - February 2016

GALLERY GUIDE
TOKYO GALLERY GUIDE
OUR PICKS FROM THE EXHIBITIONS AROUND TOWN
by Luca Eandi
HARA DOCUMENTS 10: Masaharu Sato—Tokyo Trace
The “Hara Documents”
series was launched
in 1992 to promote
emerging artists. The
tenth installment
features Masaharu Sato’s newest
work, “Tokyo Trace.” In it, Sato
presents a number of vignettes
of present-day Tokyo which he
reworks using a technique he
calls “shadowing.”
This process that Sato developed
is based on the meticulous
tracing of actual video stills. He
uses a camera to shoot ordinary
scenes of people and landscapes
and then augments them with a
digital pen. His goal is to “get as
close to the video image as possible
by emphasizing nothing and
leaving no trace of pen behind.”
The immense time and labor, the
repetitive tracing of prosaic
scenes, the production of hundreds
of frames that comprise
the animation—this seemingly
extraneous process is one that
produces the subtle skewed
reality that makes Sato’s work
special. Viewers experience a
momentary feeling of puzzlement,
sensing something amiss
in the apparently ordinary
scene.
His 2014 work, titled “Calling,”
created after the strife
of living through the Great
East Japan Earthquake and
consecutive bouts of illness
experienced by himself and
another member of his family
also makes up the exhibition,
as well as newly-created
two-dimensional art.
Bye bye come on, 2010, animation, loop, single-channel video
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
Dates: January 23–May 8, 2016
Open: 11:00 am–5:00 pm, 11:00 am–8:00 pm on Wednesdays, closed
Mondays (except March 21) and March 22, last admission 30 minutes
before closing | Web: www.haramuseum.or.jp
VISIT JAPAN: Tourism Promotion in the 1920s and 1930s
Left: MACHIDA Ryuyou, Osaka Shosen Kaisha (Yokozuna Tachiyama), c.1917 Hakodate City
Central Library Right: Pieter I. Brown, Japan (Night scene at a shrine), 1934 Private collection
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Dates: January 9–February 28, 2016 | Open: 10:00 am–5:00 pm, 10:00
am–8:00 pm on Fridays, last admission 30 minutes before closing
Web: www.momat.go.jp
It was reported in January
that Japan (nearly)
reached its goal of drawing
20 million visitors in 2015,
a full five years ahead of
the original 2020 target. Impressively,
that figure nearly quadruples
the 5.2 million people that
visited Japan when the current
government-sponsored tourism
campaign kicked off in 2003. A
true feat, considering the country
was closed to tourism until the
late 1880s, so Japan was relatively
unaccustomed to promoting its
attractions to the rest of the world
until the early 20th century.
Now, ahead of the 2020
Olympics, The National Museum
of Modern Art, Tokyo, is looking
back at advertisements that were
used to promote Japan in one of
the country’s earliest promotional
campaigns during the 1920s
and ‘30s. This era saw improved
modes of commercial aviation,
encouraging leisure travel to
Japan. The government had consciously
spent the previous two
decades bolstering its railway
and hotel networks.
The exhibition features
posters, pictorial magazines and
travel brochures from the time.
Designed by well known names
such as Hisui Sugiura, Yumeji
Takehisa, Hatsusaburo Yoshida
and Munetsugu Satomi, the
posters involve motifs that include
kimonos, sumo wrestlers,
cherry blossoms and Mount
Fuji—symbols now synonymous
with the land. If you’re looking
to save some money on this
exhibition, admission is free on
February 7.
FEBRUARY 2016 www.tokyoweekender.com