Screening: Chie Matsui Video Works 2000-2007

May 5-20

Remo Festival Gate 4F

Remo introduces Chie Matsui's past video works from 2000 to 2007 and some of her new work as well. Graduated from the Kyoto University of Art, her installations have increasingly received public attention. In the 1990s, her works were exhi- bited at MoMA and SITE Santa Fe, USA. Her works, with their fusion of a big scale, composed space and refined objects earned a big reputation. After 2000, she started to engage in video works. In 2005, she produced a series of video works entitled Heidi whose motif is taken from a famous story in the Yokohama Triennale 2005. There will also be a live performance by sound artist, Haco whose new album Riska released in mid April, was produced by Chie Matsui.

Getting there: Subway Midosuji/Sakaisuiji line, Dobutsuen-mae, exit 5, JR loop, Shin-Imamiya stn, east exit.
Open: 3–9pm (Thu-Sun)
Admission: ¥1,000 06-6634-7737

Yokoyama Taikan and Japanese Modern Art from the Adachi Museum Collection

May 10-21

Daimaru Museum Kobe

Yokoyama Taikan was born in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, in 1868. He graduated from the Tokyo Art School in 1889 as one of the school's first graduates. He greatly admired Okakura Tenshin, who proposed the creation of a new style of Japanese painting and served as Taikan's mentor. Taikan devoted his entire life to Japanese painting, with some 60 of his 90 years having such an impact that this period could rightly be claimed as an important era in the history of Japanese painting, and encompassing three generations across the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras. He is known for his introduction of European painting styles into traditional Japanese painting and harmonized them. In 1937, Taikan was awarded the first Order of Cultural Merit by the Government for his contribution to modern Japanese painting. He died in 1958.

Getting there: JR/Hankyu/Hanshin Motomachi stn, Daimaru Dept Store 9F
Open: 10am–7:30pm • Admission: ¥800/¥600
078-331-8121

Commemorating the Millennium of the Kinpusen Sutras

Thru May 27

Kyoto National Museum

© national Treasure Fujiwara no michinaga's gift bronze sutra Container kinpu shrine

The Legacy of Fujiwara no Michinaga: Courtly Splendor and Pure Land Faith, which celebrates Michinaga's pilgrimage to Kinpusen, feature the relics and sutras from the Kinpusen Sutra Mound. Michinaga made a pilgrimage to Mount Kinpu (now known as Sanjogatake in Tenkawa Village, Nara Prefecture) to bury a resplendent gilt bronze sutra container that held several scriptures written in gold letters on indigo paper that he himself had copied. The sutra container was excavated and his hand-copied scrolls discovered inside. A prayer consisting of over five hundred characters incised on the outer surface of the sutra container describes in detail the hopes that Michinaga placed in the scriptures that he copied along with his detailed description of the Kinpusen pilgrimage in his diary Mido Kanpaku Ki (Records by the Regent of the Great Hall [Hojo-ji Temple]) tells us of his journey from the capital Kyoto to the mountain. The exhibition also presents approximately 140 works, including Heian court diaries by historical figures such as Michinaga himself, Fujiwara no Sanesuke (957-1046), and Fujiwara no Yukinari (972-1027), Chinese Song-dynasty Buddhist paintings, scriptures, and ceramics, Japanese Buddhist paintings and scriptures related to Pure Land faith and the concept of mappo, Heian-period decorative arts, Buddhist statues, other sutra mound relics from Kyoto and its environs, as well as roof tiles excavated from Jomyo-ji and Hojoji, the temples Michinaga built.

Getting there: JR/Kintetsu Kyoto stn, take Bus 206 or 208, get off at Hakubutsukan, Sanjyu-san kando mae
Open: 9:30am–6pm. Closed Mon
Admission: ¥1,200/¥800/free for children
075-525-2473

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Various Archetypes

Thru Jun 24

The National Museum of Art Osaka

Born in Tokyo in 1948, Hiroshi Sugimoto began taking photographs in New York in 1974. In recent years Sugimoto has been prolifically active, touring internationally with a double bill of exhibitions: a photographic retrospective and a show in which photographs are exhibited alongside fine-art objects. The late 1990s saw a range of exciting developments in Sugimoto's work, and the three series represented here are central to his activity during this period. In Portraits Sugimoto uses traditional portrait conventions to produce life like 'portrait photos' of waxwork figures which he has modeled on characters in paintings. In Architecture he produced blurred photographs of iconic modern buildings, highlighting their essential qualities. Conceptual Forms is a series of imposing photographs of small models which represents, in three dimensional form, the mathematical equations for cubic functions. The exhibition is unusual in that it presents a set of new acquisitions, and does not aim to provide a full introduction to Sugimoto's work since the late 1990s.

Getting there: Subway Yotsubashi line, Higobashi stn, exit 3
Open: 10am–4pm. Closed Mon • Admission: ¥420/¥130/¥70
06-6447-4680

Kansai Art Listings May

ART section compiled by Maki Nibayashi