No Border

Six contemporary artists re-imagine the state of Japanese painting

Kumi Machida, Visitor, 90.9x116.7cm, 2004 Junichiro Nomi

It’s been nearly 100 years since artists and art historians first advocated the development of nihonga as a way to express the scope and nature of a uniquely Japanese art form and as a counterpoint to Western painting. Throughout its history, nihonga has made use of traditional materials like mineral-based pigments and gold leaf while never straying too far from the philosophical ideals of Japanese imagery.

“No Border” presents six artists working through, around, or in defiance of conventional themes and mediums. True to its title, the exhibition candidly reconfigures and explodes any notion that nihonga is labored by its history and traditions. Japanese painting, the curators and contributing artists seem to say, is simply what they make of it.

Approach, for instance, works like Kumi Machida’s Late Night Zone (2004), in which the fingernails of two enormous hands morph upwards in thick keratin waves, and any preconceptions about nihonga quickly vanish. Though crafted with traditional mineral-based pigments, Machida’s work—dripping with vulgar cleanliness and a sci-fi perversity—is more readily the content of contemporary pop culture and manga. Rather than presenting the customary flowers and birds, Machida mixes genderless, baby-like beings with symbolic images of social awkwardness to create a vivid malaise.

Mise Natsunosuke, Japanese Picture, 250x650cm, 2005 Kunihiro Shikata

Yuki Yoshida’s art also finds inspiration from science fiction, albeit with a form closer to the imagery of scientific realities like nebulae and strange attractors. Dazzling layers of bright spirals and streaming spheres glide across flat black grounds in images that speak more of particle accelerators and atomic dervishes than the ways and means of wa.

Yet a fixation on futurisms is not the only thematic course evident in the show. In contrast, Akira Nagasawa creates timeless paintings of mythic beasts he refers to as “tigers.” In The Big Circus (2005), Nagasawa conjures the dynamism and sophistication of a seasoned abstractionist while maintaining a storyteller’s sense of mysticism and possibility. In the work, a deep umber creature stretches across the top of the ground and stares out while four smaller animals look up and cry with jagged violet voices. The narrative is tremendously open-ended and invites speculation while never enforcing any correct view.

Akira Nagasawa, Tiger and Tiger, 240x192cm, 2005 Norihiro Ueno

Nagasawa’s resistance to such impositions reflects a central issue the artists of “No Border” take with the “official” directives of nihonga. The exhibition shows that—unlike a century ago—today’s artists are no longer solely concerned with annunciating and differentiating a uniquely Japanese art form. Alive to the possibilities offered by the global contemporary art world, they are content with the simple fact that they are Japanese, and it naturally follows that their works are as well.
This idea is coolly apparent in the lavishly coated and unendingly detailed landscapes of Mise Natsunosuke.

At first glance, these images recall an ideal Japan of orderly villages and broad mountains, but closer inspection reveals an excess of historical and popular references. Among samurai shadows, Miyazaki-esque machinery, pencil-scrawled notes and airplane suicide attacks, Natsunosuke weaves an image that demands time of viewers but rewards them accordingly. His works speak effortlessly of their Japanese-ness, but at the same time—as with many of the pieces here—they push beyond simplistic notions of patriotism and occupy a more instinctively borderless world.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, until March 26. See exhibition listings (Kayabacho/Kiba) for details.

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