17 best art exhibitions in Tokyo right now

Since opening in 1959, the National Museum of Western Art has been known for its showcase of Western art dating from the 14th to the mid-20th century. During its 65-year history, the museum has never hosted a contemporary art exhibition – until now.

‘Does the Future Sleep Here?’ is NMWA’s first contemporary art exhibition. From March 12 to May 12 2024, you’ll be able to see works from more than 20 artists of all ages who are creating experimental art in Japan.

With its inception, the museum hopes that its extensive collection of Western art would spark the creativity of a future generation of artists. Therefore this special exhibition features contemporary art inspired by NMWA’s permanent collection.

The diverse selection of contemporary art in this showcase are interspersed with classics from the museum’s main collection, including masterpieces by Monet, Cézanne and Pollock. Here you’re able to see how NMWA has inspired a new wave of artists. So don’t miss this groundbreaking exhibition that gives you the opportunity to admire the best of Western art alongside thought-provoking contemporary pieces from today’s talented array of artists.

The exhibition is closed on Monday (except May 6) and May 7.

One of the most influential figures in twentieth-century sculpture finally gets a comprehensive career retrospective in Japan. Romanian-born Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) is considered one of the pioneers of modernist sculpture, thanks to his bold exploration of pure form. Around 90 exhibits, including 2D works such as fresco, tempera and drawings as well as sculptures, demonstrate how his muse flourished after a period working as assistant to Auguste Rodin.

Brancusi’s artistic practice came to combine wild shapes influenced by non-Western art forms, such as African sculpture, with an acute sense of the materials he was working with. In earlier, plaster sculptures such as ‘The Kiss’ (1907-10), human and animal figures are abstracted yet still clearly identifiable. By the late 1920s however, as illustrated by the bronze-cast ‘Bird in Space’ (1926), Brancusi’s subjects are rendered as abstract silhouettes almost entirely distinct from their natural form.

This retrospective includes over 20 sculptures on loan from the Brancusi Estate, as well as works from other collections both Japanese and international.

The exhibition is closed on Mondays (except April 29, May 6), April 30 and May 7.

This debut Japanese solo show from Chicago-born Theaster Gates takes place at one of Tokyo’s most prestigious art venues. Gates’s rise to prominence is very much part of the art world’s increasing recognition of the voices of African-American and other non-white communities. A truly multi-disciplinary creative – focused primarily on sculpture and ceramics but also working in architecture, music, performance, fashion and design – Gates strives to preserve and promote Black culture via projects as large as a Chicago initiative that has transformed over 40 abandoned buildings into public art spaces.

Also key to Gates’s vision, and a central theme of this show, is the influence that Japanese cultural and craft traditions have had on the artist over the past two decades. From initially travelling to Japan in 2004 to study ceramics, encounters and explorations over the subsequent decades have led Gates to formulate 'Afro-Mingei'. This is a creative ideology inspired by Gates’s identification of a spirit of resistance shared by Afro-American culture and Japan’s Mingei folk crafts movement. It imagines Black aesthetics and Japanese craft philosophies coming together in our globalised era to form a future hybrid culture.

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978; Greek-born and of Italian parentage) astounded the art world of the 1910s with paintings of town squares and interior scenes that combined sharp clarity with distorted perspectives, disparate motifs, and a fantastical atmosphere in order to convey the strangeness that he felt was concealed just beyond the everyday. The artist later dubbed this style ‘metaphysical painting’.

This major retrospective is the first large-scale showing of de Chirico’s work in Japan in a decade. The artist’s almost seven-decade-long career is explored comprehensively through a series of themed sections including ‘Metaphysical Interior’, ‘Mannequin’ and ‘Piazza d'Italia (Italian Piazza)’. As these exhibits trace, after 1919 the artist pursued a more classical style of painting, yet still drew upon motifs from his earlier, more dreamlike work.

Surrealist trailblazers Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, themselves no strangers to the uncanny, were among those blown away by de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings. This show, which also includes the artist’s sculptures and set designs, is a rare opportunity to immerse oneself in de Chirico’s singular vision.

As the Covid-19 pandemic fades from our collective memory, the realities that were revealed over that distressing period come into greater focus for those willing to look back. The National Art Center, Tokyo’s first group exhibition in five years explores the idea that the pandemic, with its enforced social distancing, international travel bans and remote working, shattered the illusion that geographical and spatial distances between us had been eliminated by the tech innovations and globalisation of recent decades.

Through a post-pandemic lens, ‘Universal / Remote’ looks mainly at art created prior to the globally disruptive event. Works by eight international and Japanese artists, and one art collective, are sprawled across two expansive sections.

‘Constant Growth at a Pan-Global Scale’ looks at how supposedly 'universal' capital and information continue to drive post-Covid society, with the balance between state power and individual freedom becoming increasingly tense. ‘The Remote Individual’ then investigates the paradox that, despite ever-greater connectivity, a sense of personal isolation is also growing.

Highlights include ‘Dragonfly Eyes’, a video work by Beijing/NYC-based Xu Bing that stitches together actual surveillance camera footage to create a poignant love story, and Danish photographer Tina Enghoff’s desolate images of places where people have died alone.

 

The Tokyo Contemporary Art Award, established in 2018, is a prize intended to encourage mid-career artists to make further breakthroughs in their work by providing winners with several years of continuous support. Here, the two winners of the award’s fourth edition each present shows that, despite their creative diversity, both involve visitors and their actions becoming key elements of the art. Through this, both shows lead audiences to examine their relationships: with fellow humans, animals, and society’s expectations.

Saeborg, born in 1981 and based in Tokyo, creates and performs as a latex bodysuit-clad ‘imperfect cyborg, half human and half toy’ that enables the female behind this guise to transcend such characteristics as age and gender. Here Saeborg presents ‘I Was Made for Loving You’, for which a section of the venue has been transformed into a life-sized toy farm. Visitors will experience a highly immersive installation-performance that transcends the boundaries between the body and synthetic materials, and between human and animal.

Michiko Tsuda (born in 1980 and working in Ishikawa prefecture) presents ‘Life is Delaying’, an installation that uses video to explore the notion of physicality. The work recreates the private world experienced by a family at home through the perspective of someone operating an old-school video camera. The piece was inspired by Tsuda’s childhood memory of a video camera appearing in her family residence. Here, fictitious documentation of a family, the smallest basic unit of society, is expanded upon to examine the positions of individuals within larger groups and systems.

The exhibition is closed on Monday (except April 29 and May 6), April 30 and May 7.

Opened in 2016 in Munich, the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art (MUCA) holds one of Europe’s foremost collections of urban-inspired contemporary art, encompassing the likes of Kaws, Banksy and Shepherd Fairey. Now Tokyo, a key city in global street culture, finally gets a taste of the MUCA collection with the arrival of this touring exhibition that has already wowed Kyoto and Oita City.

Over 60 major pieces, including career-defining work by the above-mentioned figures as well as fellow legends including JR, Invader and Barry McGee, are being shown in Japan for the very first time. Highlights include Banksy’s ‘Bullet Hole Bust’, in which the artist’s anti-establishment attitude is rendered in 3D form: the cultural bust form associated with classical art is brutalised by a bullet to the forehead. Kaws’s ‘4ft Companion (Dissected Brown)’, meanwhile, cuts away the left-side ‘skin’ of one his signature ‘Companion’ characters to reveal its inner organs.

An art gallery operated by luxury house Hermès and located within the brand’s Ginza flagship store, Le Forum presents the second exhibition of a two-part series exploring the practice of ecology in art. ‘Ephemeral Anchoring’ brings together diverse work from four international creators to examine contemporary art's potential to be a site for dialogue between nature and human energy.

Photographs by Nicolas Flocq, shot during dives into oceans and rivers across the globe, use both conceptual and scientific methods to capture 'underwater landscapes' together with their ecosystems. As the representative work included here demonstrates, the results of Flocq’s shots range from documentary of subaquatic human activity normally hidden from view, to abstract images formed from the green and blue tones of the sea. Texas-based Kate Newby, meanwhile, contributes colourful abstract installations that appear to proliferate across the gallery space.

Japan’s Takeshi Yasura presents installations themed on various natural and sensory phenomena ('noise', 'cosmos') that are partly the result of the artist’s daily practice of literal 'field work': sowing seeds, ploughing and replanting. Finally, French sculptor Raphaël Zarka presents a series of photographs in which the latent dynamism of public artworks is revealed by skateboarders riding their geometric forms.

The exhibition is closed on March 27 and April 3.

Text by Darren Gore

Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) has since 2001 been holding this annual exhibition as part of its multi-faceted support for young and emerging Japanese talent. 2024 sees the event comprise solo shows by six up-and-coming artists, whose work encompasses painting, photography, video, installations and more, split into two sessions running from April through to June.

Part one (April 6 to May 5) features Chisa Takami’s ‘℃ | The Ring of 23 Degrees’, which comprises videos and performances on the themes of ‘ambiguity’, ‘voids’, and the ‘presence of mediating objects’ (performances held on Saturday and Sunday only; see website for schedule). Naoto Nakamura, meanwhile, presents ‘Fernweh Trupp’, in which a narrative written by the artist unfolds in an apartment-like installation which combines imagery, furniture, and sound design. Finally, Chiho Okuno contributes ‘Training for My New Body: I Want to See My Back’ in which videos, engravings and three-dimensional pieces depict the world as seen by rabbits, an animal that has a near-360-degree field of vision.

Part two (May 18 to June 16) then presents Kanako Hiramatsu’s ‘Heap Up Sand’, in which the artist takes inspiration from the activity of ants to create an environment that incorporates multiple perspectives. This is joined by ‘Dogs and FPS’ from Satoshi Kikuya, an animated work giving viewers the perspective of a character who becomes lost while following a dog. Finally, Sayaka Toda’s ‘Echoes of the Unspoken: The Silent Voices of the Vanishing’ presents photos and videos depicting the atelier of a fictitious artist who spent his life creating terracotta figures of naked women. In this Toda aims to give a voice to women who in the present day are increasingly liberated from such objectification.

This compelling programme takes place inside a downtown venue with distinct character: TOKAS’ Hongo space occupies a building constructed back in 1928, with its rugged concrete shell emblematic of an architectural style that flourished following 1923’s Great Kanto earthquake.

The exhibition is closed on Monday (except April 29), April 30 and May 6-17.

This is the very first opportunity to view the National Museum of Western Art’s complete set of ‘The Disasters of War’, a series of prints by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) depicting the Spanish War of Independence. Across some 82 monochrome images, the Spanish artist unflinchingly documents the suffering, both civilian and military, caused by this conflict against invading French forces that lasted from 1808 until 1814. Goya also sharply satirises the political moves that went on behind the scenes.

A number of techniques are used to achieve murky depths of grey and black appropriate for such subject matter, including etching, burnishing, drypoint and aquatint. In a print titled ‘Against the Common Good’ we see the ‘accounting’ of war being carried out by a demon with bat wings extending from his skull, while the less figurative ‘Cartloads to the Cemetery’ shows the body of a long-limbed young female being unloaded from a cart prior to her funeral.

Together, these works convey the wretchedness that accompanies human conflict in any era. Furthermore, the series asks a question that is more pertinent than ever, in a present marked by the ‘fake news’ phenomenon: what should we do when truth and justice break down, and the dark side of civilisation is revealed?

The exhibition is closed on Monday (except April 29 and May 6) and May 7.

Opens Saturday April 27

Animal life is not something commonly associated with Tokyo – a city that, arguably more than any other world capital, is built for human convenience. Nonetheless, as this exhibition vividly demonstrates, the relationship between Tokyoites and animals has run deep ever since the city’s establishment as Edo over four centuries ago.

Around 240 exhibits, on loan from the vast collection of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, explore this human-beast connection from the establishment of the Edo Shogunate in 1603 through to more recent times. This show is an expanded ‘homecoming’ edition of ‘Un Bestiare Japonais’, a highly acclaimed event held at Paris’ Maison de la culture du Japon in 2022 and 2023.

Tokyo’s love of cats and dogs, still highly evident today, is seen here in pieces ranging from ukiyo-e woodblock prints from the masters of that genre, to the often cute motifs used in both traditional crafts and more modern toys and ornaments. A print by the legendary Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858; shown in the exhibition’s second half) features a plump domestic cat as it gazes from a window, with Mt Fuji on the distant horizon. Less lovable creatures are referenced too, as in Harunobu Suzuki’s (1724-1770; exhibition’s second half) depiction of a mother and her child hanging up a mosquito net.

Edo and Tokyo history is illuminated through this diverse selection of exhibits. Pre-mass industrialisation, the city relied heavily upon the ‘labour’ of horses, and a section unique to this Tokyo edition features works, including nishiki-e paintings, depicting the horse-drawn carriages that ran on the streets from 1882 until 1903 as a form of public transportation.

Note: Content varies across the exhibition’s first (April 27-May 26) and second (May 28-June 23) terms. The exhibition is closed on Monday (or Tuesday if Monday is a public holiday).

The 18th edition of Watari-Um's 'I Love Art' series explores the concept of self-camouflage. In an era when we are overloaded with so many things and ideas, Watari-um posits that art might be the perfect tool for the act of self-preservation that is camouflaging oneself.

Works by 11 artists pulled from the museum’s formidable collection, including Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, are combined with pieces from three Japanese guest artists – Rika Noguchi, Hiroshi Sugito and Hiraki Sawa – to form four sections that total around 80 thought-provoking exhibits.

'Camouflage into Everyday Life' features a 1986 self-portrait from Warhol, whose approach to 'camouflage' was expressed in his statement that his style of painting arose from his desire to be a machine. This section also includes works from Man Ray, who was a leading figure in Dada, Surrealism and the Avant-garde movement.

'Camouflage into Nature' then introduces natural world-related works from artists including Gary Hill, whose 'Leaves' is a dual-screen video installation displaying flickering images of a leaf overlaid with wordplay.

'Camouflage into Memory' next showcases one of Joseph Beuys’s most famed works, the self- descriptively titled ‘Felt Suit’. There's also an installation by Hiroshi Sugito that incorporates LED lighting and uncooked potatoes.

Finally, ‘Camouflage into Space’ presents pieces that take a myriad of approaches to the spatial dimension, from the likes of Donald Judd and Nam June Paik.

 

Yokohama’s largest art festival, and one of Japan’s longest-running, is now underway and wowing visitors with work from some 93 international artists, 20 of whom are exhibiting brand new creations. The Yokohama Triennale takes place every three years at venues across a broad stretch of this historic port city, and this eighth edition reflects Yokohama’s famously cosmopolitan outlook by inviting two Chinese contemporary artists onboard as artistic directors.

Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu have given the title ‘Wild Grass: Our Lives’ to this Triennale that tackles issues such as globalisation and the resurgence of nationalism in spectacular fashion, reaffirming art’s relevance to our daily existence. From the many exhibits and events centred around the newly renovated Yokohama Museum of Art, BankArt Kaiko and the Former Daiichi Bank Yokohama Branch, as well as numerous smaller venues, we’ve picked five of the most compelling things to see and do...

Renowned 20th century master Henri Matisse (1869-1954), though best known as a painter, was a true multimedia artist whose creativity also spanned sculpture, printmaking and other forms. This is the very first exhibition in Japan to focus on the French artist’s work with paper cut-outs, the medium he energetically pursued in the last decade-and-a-half of his life.

Works on loan from the Matisse Museum in Nice, France show how the artist began creating expressionistic collages composed of scissor-cut pieces of paper in a multitude of colours. The subjects and themes of these cutout works included the female form, avian life, and a distinctive two-dimensional take on the flowers-and-fruit still life. While initially modest in size, these cut-outs grew in scale to become murals spanning entire walls: the largest example featured here is some eight metres wide.

 

Brazilian-American visual artist Oscar Oiwa is returning to Tokyo with a solo exhibition at Shibuya Hikarie. Oiwa is known for his unique way of expressing global issues through social satire and plenty of humour, which he builds into his multimedia compositions. Born in São Paulo, Oiwa started his artistic career in Japan before moving to New York, where he is currently based. He has previously held large-scale exhibitions at prominent museums and art festivals around Japan, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale.

Oiwa's upcoming exhibition in Tokyo centres on the fictional aquatic creature ‘Oil Octopus’, and how it lives through turbulent times as an expression of ongoing environmental issues. The show features a range of new artworks including 25 paintings, videos and three-dimensional pieces. ‘Oil Octopus’ made its first appearance in Oiwa's 1999 painting 'Aquarium', but here you'll get to experience the creature as a guide to the exhibition as it drifts in and out of Shibuya Hikarie via banners and artwork displays on multiple floors of the building.

Another highlight of the exhibition is the massive mural on the fourth-floor Hikarie deck. The final touches of the mural will be completed by Oiwa himself during a public showcase on May 3, and the piece will remain on display until September. Additionally, a giant balloon which was previously shown at the Keelung Art Festival in Taiwan will also be on display.

 

Step into an enchanted digital forest in this collaborative exhibition between teamLab and Galaxy. Now in its third iteration, the interactive experience is based on the concept of catching different digital creatures to study them before releasing them back into their habitat. As it's a digital art experience, you'll be using an app on the Galaxy smartphone to collect different prehistoric animals in the mystical forest.

Be gentle when approaching these critters! If you try to touch them they might run and disappear into the forest. If you're lucky, they might become curious instead and turn towards you. Nevertheless, the exercise here is to point your phone camera at them, release a Study Arrow in their direction, and capture them onto your screen so that you can learn more about their nature.

You can also work together with other visitors and shepherd the dinosaurs projected on the floor. This allows you to then deploy the Study Net and capture them into your phone. Once you've done studying them, you can release them back into the space.

While the exhibit is free, reservations are required so as to avoid overcrowding the venue. Each session is an hour long, with the exhibition open from 11am until 7pm daily. You can book a timeslot as early as three days in advance via the event website.

British-born artist Mark Leckey is a product of the UK’s ever-vibrant pop culture, and through diverse mediums he confronts youth, dance music, nostalgia, social class and history from an often countercultural perspective. The subcultural edge of his work – which encompasses film, sound, sculpture, performance, collage and more – additionally takes on a gritty incongruousness when enjoyed at Louis Vuitton’s sleek Omotesando exhibition space.

The French luxury house here presents two Leckey works from its collection. 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore feat. Big Red Soundsystem' (1999-2003-2010) is a film that, through a mash-up of archive footage, vividly traces the development of the UK’s underground dance music scene from 1970s disco through to the ’90s rave scene.

2013’s 'Felix the Cat', meanwhile, is a giant inflatable rendering of the cartoon cat that Leckey considers a pioneer of the digital age. Almost a century ago, this feline character was one of the first subjects to be transmitted as a TV signal.

Text by Darren Gore