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Backcasting shows and events from ’24
A quick list of things seen or listened to in 2024 which at the time felt important and still do. Enjoy.
The Spirit of Avant-Garde Photography: Transforming "Nothing Much" Shuzo Takiguchi, Nobuya Abe, Kiyoji Otsuji, Shigeo Gocho (The Shoto Museum of Art)
Kenichiro Fukumoto “Fragments of the Earth” (Nanzuka 2G)
Thomas Gillant “Dimension Blur” (Gallery Toh)
Nakahira Takuma: Burn—Overflow「中平卓馬 火―氾濫」(The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, MOMAT) My favourite part of the photographer’s retrospective was when an Italian tourist, caught by staff taking pictures of the only video on display, screamed he was “just translating”. He left only to return moments later adding “You’re so stupid!” The odd atmosphere extended to a video of Nakahira seen scaling a wire fence to reach the sea, another way of picturing a photographer breaking free. Intentionally repetitive works, including the seminal Overflow installation, certainly proved his work remains vital but the mood inside the museum felt pretty sombre. Like a mausoleum or even a monument.
The video was shot in 2005, a document of Nakahira that became part of the “Meganeura” group show at Aomori’s Hachinohe City Museum of Art. 1 Now almost twenty years later, Nakahira has reemerged in spirit, his work hung awkwardly with some laid politely across the floor and others placed behind glass instead of up the wall as originally intended — Décalage at ADDA in Marseille — all hoping to be free of rules the photographer had tried to avoid.
Photos of the photographer show Nakahira at different stages, windswept, youthful, bedraggled, exhausted. And then there are “the doubles” as I like to call them, images repeated in short breath of each other for no apparent reason but none the less arresting. Early black and white works are graphic with pictures reduced to an image of gesture and mark. And then something odd happens mid way through as his photos turn to colour. Rooms turn from bright white to mourning black as if passing through a mental threshold. Works surge forward become bold and colourful and fill the room, leaps and bounds beyond the more measured efforts that fill the pages of Asahi Camera and Gendai no Me.
Oddness fills other moments too as geography bends to the will of Samual Beckett, the writer born in Dublin, schooled in Northern Ireland and later resident in France, who appears in a print laid across the floor re-staging Nakahira’s pivotal Circulation: Date, Place, Action, which originally appeared at the Paris Youth Biennale in 1971, then Tokyo, and thereafter Belfast. Now the print, with the Irish author’s name partially cut off as if reworking his name as an ode to the ‘rewording’ works of Beckett, sat the other side of white tape stretched across the floor as if filling in what was missing from the original piece long since lost and destroyed.
Other pictures come from the museum collection upstairs: Ei Ebihara, Mako Idemitsu (Another Day of a Housewife, 1977), and Yutaka Takanashi (Machi, 1977). Ebihara with Sketches of Accident Scenes really stands out — a precursor to Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts, perhaps, or a reference point for the more recent Channeled Drawings from photographer Hiroko Komatsu. Awesome.
Barbara Singer “Dream Roll” (18, Murata)
Kate Newby “Very active weather” (KAYOKOYUKI)
Ecology: Dialogue on Circulations - Dialogue 2 “Ephemeral Anchoring” Nicolas Floc’h, Kate Newby, Takeshi Yasura, Rafaël Zarka (Ginza Maison Hermès)
Wu Wei Cheung (a restaurant somewhere in Aoyama)
Ronnie Van Hout “The Giants” (Goya Curtain)
Fumitsugu Takedo “100の目は交代で眠る” (Room_412) otherwise known as “100 eyes take turns sleeping” at Room_412 was an intense exhibition squeezed into the former (windowless) apartment. A year’s worth of imagery, two looped films and a zine titled “Compression Sustainer”. Best seen when listening to Daichi Wago & junchai’s self-released album Koko Doko?
Ho Tzu Nyen “A for Agents” (MOT Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
Morag Keil “Postcards from Edinburgh” (Galerie Tenko Presents) A series of small neglected signboards surrounded by a barricade of bikes picture Edin(g)burgh in a different light (with an extra letter) — each one brightening the corners of communal concrete.
Theaster Gates “Afro-Mingei” (Mori Art Museum) Undoubtedly a first of its kind, the show would have been one to remember — if were possible to move past the not-so-subtle sponsorship of Italian fashion houses, the dumb disco ball and the odd archive of Tokoname pottery — but only in places; The segment devoted to parallel histories sadly relegated to a corridor. A great show that with a bit of editing could have been legendary. (https://ornumtrauts.substack.com/p/sound-sound-2)
“The Underground Theatre Vol.7” talk event at Dommune Parco Shibuya on May Day 05/01. Tomoya Kumagai of publisher SLOGAN, the playwright Masahiko Akuta and sociologist Shinji Miyadai appeared at DOMMUNE in Shibuya in celebration of Akuta’s first book in 50 years, The Underground Theatre Vol.7. Several hours of straight talk discussed the abysmal state of things to find a way through disinformation, an event titled “Principle of Hope” where Akuta read from his 1000 page opus which one person described as “a blunt instrument of knowledge”. To quote the great Paul Auster: “If we cannot even name a common, everyday object that we hold in our hands, how can we expect to speak of the things that truly concern us? Unless we begin to embody the notion of change in the words we use, we will continue to be lost.”
J. Parker Valentine, “Hypnic Jerk” (MISAKO&ROSEN)
Jessica mentioned how her studio seemed small by comparison while larger than the gallery her paintings temporarily called home. Physical constraints are important, she mused, Limits like the hand break of a car throttling back and wrestles speed and the urge to make big things. To see what that might happen she would sometimes paint a canvas on its side and develop a crook neck in the process. Her current exhibition — of two large canvases of ink, graphite, pastel, water soluble colored pencil and mud dye — features one painting that jumps out from one corner. It’s propped against two walls and lifted off the floor with the aid of giant brass tacks so big they literally, to paraphrase gallerist Jeffrey Rosen, crucify the space. Canvases feature the odd skull and the figure of a twisted ouroboric symbol eating its own tail. Twitching with a hypnic jerk as both body and mind live in a liminal state; neither wide awake nor fast asleep but somewhere in the middle.
Thomas Cap de Ville & Nicolas Ceccaldi (Galerie Tenko Presents w/Joseph Bourgois) at Fujiya Building 4F, Kaminakameguro 1-3-9, Nakameguro, Tokyo
The exhibition was in a privately owned space, the owners of which suddenly decided to open a pop-up coffee stand within the space. To one corner uncollected rubbish jerks me back to the memory of an old flat in London as handmade books written in French by Nicholas sit on a circular dinner table with each one as bold as sketchbooks by Shinro Ohtake and just as big. Thomas also stares backwards with thoughts of figurines and scenes from the past that describe a kitsch commodification of past masters — classical musicians, post Impressionist painting, outliers and outsiders turned into poster art and stock music with the background noise of muzak.
His are excavations of a personal nature and time spent in punk bands while other works mine the surface of a contemporary culture lacking depth. In the listening room at the far end of the space, an AI-trained video set to a jazz soundtrack plays on repeat. While the main room contains 5 short stories by Nicholas retelling the story of nearly drowning, one of which includes being grabbed by then dragged back to the surface and water’s edge by their Jazz musician stepfather. Thomas also dwells on technology to suspend the death of one painting and a Parisian post impressionist street scene that has been embellished by AI to include modern day traffic all of which he has repainted by hand and fixed the un-stretched canvas to the wall.
A visit to Arai Mise Studio in Chiba.
A screening at WWW Shibuya of Harmony Korine’s AggroDr1ft. Cigars and plugins.
Rumica Kaji “Sugar for the Pill” (Alternative Space The White) Aside from the Slowdive inspired title, photographs from Rumica’s show have an equally excellent backstory. Having recently moved from Osaka she reached out to people with the hope of making friends while also taking their picture.
TUHEADS “Pi Pi Pi Picnic” (LOWW) Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up pictures postwar London with a twist. Inspired by Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar and his collection of short stoies Las Babas del Diablo (1959) technology bids farewell to the past, central to paintings that are born from a Photoshop plug-in and text-based prompts.
Elizabeth Glaessner “Head Games” (Perrotin Tokyo)
Fumimaro Ayano & Rob Halverson “Same as the Street” (Lavender Opener Chair)
Nick Karp “VISITORS” (Trunk Hotel) There’s a geographical background to Nick’s photos of touring wrestlers from 2023. Auto-mod, formed in Tokyo, was a local band that took cues from the theatricality of New Wave, ending its 13-day tour in 1978 at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall by declaring the band dead and buried as the guitarist played his instrument with a razor blade.
Mike Nogami “Metroscape 2” (Le Déco)
Luke Crouch “Danchi Garden” (Gallery KTO) Luke’s show makes for an interesting counterpoint to Morag Keil’s “Postcards from Edinburgh” set within a tower of flats in central Shibuya. Yet the spiritual crosses a strange boundary in Luke’s paintings where landmarks take a turn for the surreal with lost parts of the city deified in overgrowth.
Teppei Soutome “GEO” (Art Cruise Gallery)
Nathan Hylden “As It Were” (MISAKO&ROSEN)
The 71st Japanese Traditional Crafts Exhibition (Mitsukoshi Isetan Nihonbashi) An artisanal craft exhibition in Tokyo — beautiful and busy. Highlights include kimono fabric stitched with a repeating moon phase diagram.
Osamu Kanemura “Gate Hack Eden” (Cave-Ayumi Gallery)
B. Ingrid Olson “Hys” (XYZ collective)
Gabriel Hartley “Floorlines” (Seventeen Gallery, London) I wrote Drawing breath for the exhibition, which probably mentioned Orson Welles more than was necessary but there was a good reason why. A bold display of paintings, photographs and ceramics rooted in Japan.
Mika Kasai “I painted a huge picture today” (Tatsuro Kishimoto)
Joel Kirkham “It’s not Cats” (Lavender Opener Chair). A great show from Joel of colour pushed back and forth through floor-bound toweling sculptures and wall hung store receipts. “It’s not Cats” ends Jan 8, 2025. Here’s wishing you all a Happy New Year.
“Meganeura/ICANOF 2005” at Hachinohe City Museum of Art, Aomori. Curated by Toshima Shigeyuki. April 9th-10th, 2005. featuring Daido Moriyama, Haruko Handa, Keiko Sasaoka, Shuhei Motoyama, Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanishi.