20 best art exhibitions in Tokyo right now

Ron Mueck has long been celebrated for redefining figurative sculpture through extraordinary craftsmanship and emotional acuity. After early work in film and advertising, the Australian-born, UK-based artist emerged on the contemporary art scene in the mid-1990s, gaining international attention with Pinocchio (1996) and Dead Dad (1996-97), the latter exhibited in the landmark ‘Sensation’ show at London’s Royal Academy in 1997.

Over the decades, his meticulously crafted human figures, rendered at startlingly altered scales, have probed themes of vulnerability, solitude, resilience and the fragile complexity of existence. With a rare and limited oeuvre of about fifty works, each sculpture distills months or even years of observation and reflection, resulting in pieces that feel at once hyper-real and quietly enigmatic.

From April 29 to September 23, the Mori Art Museum hosts the artist’s first solo exhibition in Japan in eighteen years. Organised in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the exhibition gathers eleven works tracing Mueck’s evolution, including six making their Japanese debut. Its monumental centrepiece is the Japan premiere of Mass (2016-17), an immersive installation of 100 giant skulls reconfigured to reflect the museum’s architecture. Other highlights include Angel (1997), Woman with Shopping (2013) and the iconic In Bed (2005), each inviting viewers into a deeply intimate emotional space.

Complementing the sculptures, photographs and films by Gautier Deblonde offer a glimpse into Mueck’s studio practice, revealing the quiet rigour behind some of contemporary art’s most affecting works.

Robert Longo has long turned the visual noise of contemporary life into images of monumental intensity. Best known for his hyperreal charcoal drawings that magnify the political, cultural and emotional charge of mass-media imagery, the New York-based artist has spent four decades probing the fractures beneath American power, spectacle and mythology. Now, after an absence of thirty years, he returns to Japan with ‘Angels of the Maelstrom’, on view at Pace Gallery Tokyo until June 17.

This new solo exhibition gathers recent drawings and sculptures shaped by Longo’s enduring dialogue between Japan and the US. Across Pace’s two floors, allegorical images of crashing waves, submerged whales, tigers, mountains and blooming peonies unfold beside portraits of 20th-century American icons, creating a charged visual field where natural force and historical memory collide. At the centre stands Untitled (American Samurai), a monumental depiction of Shohei Ohtani, whom Longo sees as a living emblem of cultural convergence: a Japanese athlete redefining America’s national pastime.

The exhibition’s title draws on Angelus Novus, Paul Klee’s haunting image of an angel suspended between surrender and flight, later interpreted by Walter Benjamin as history’s helpless witness. Longo adopts this figure as a lens through which to view the present maelstrom of violence, media saturation and uncertain futures.

Born in Kolkata in 1963 and now based in New York, Rina Banerjee has established herself as a singular voice in the global contemporary art scene. Drawing from her experience of migration and diasporic identity, Banerjee creates intricate, richly layered sculptures and installations out of everyday materials like cotton threads, feathers, shells and glass chandeliers. Her practice, informed by both engineering training and fine art education at Yale, navigates the intersections of postcolonial history, feminism and global exchange, often infusing critical perspectives with a subtle, disarming sense of humour.

‘You made me leave home…’ at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo is an exhibition of 19 works drawn from the collection of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Organised as part of the foundation’s ‘Hors-les-murs’ programme, which brings major artworks to venues around the world, the exhibition marks both the 20th anniversary of the Espace Louis Vuitton and a decade of the ‘Hors-les-murs’ initiative.

Spanning installation, sculpture and painting, the exhibition foregrounds Banerjee’s ongoing exploration of migration, colonial legacies and the circulation of people and objects. At its core is the monumental installation In an unnatural storm… (2008), presented publicly for the first time by the Fondation. Suspended from the ceiling in a cascading constellation of forms, the work evokes both the wonder and instability of global journeys, drawing inspiration from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.

Alongside this, recent works such as Black Noodles (2023) and a new 2025 painting series extend Banerjee’s inquiry into identity as fluid, hybrid and transnational. Blending references to Indian miniature painting, Chinese silk traditions and Mesoamerican imagery, her compositions oscillate between abstraction and figuration, often conjuring enigmatic female figures reminiscent of reimagined goddesses.

Through its sensuous materiality and conceptual depth, ‘You made me leave home…’ offers a compelling meditation on displacement and belonging.

The Tokyo Station Gallery presents the first major exhibition in Japan to feature the works of Swiss artist Karl Walser (1877–1943), who built a multifaceted career that spanned painting, illustration, book design and stage production. Bringing together approximately 150 pieces, many shown for the first time, the retrospective is especially notable for its focus on the time Walser spent in Japan.

Closely associated with the Modernist Berlin Secession movement, Walser’s art blends the somber tonalities of fin-de-siècle aesthetics with refined, luminous colour, producing images marked by an enduring sense of mystery. Long overshadowed by his younger brother, the writer Robert Walser, his oeuvre is now receiving renewed scholarly and public attention.

The exhibition traces Walser’s evolution from his early Symbolist-inflected paintings and Jugendstil-inspired drawings to his prolific output as an illustrator and designer for major literary figures. But its most compelling part highlights the artist’s 1908 journey to Japan, undertaken during a period of personal crisis. Travelling through Tokyo, Kyoto and Miyazu, Walser produced a remarkable body of watercolours and sketches depicting festivals, landscapes and everyday scenes. Rarely exhibited, these works stand out for their vivid chromatic sensitivity and documentary value.

Further sections explore his collaborations in theatre and mural painting, revealing an artist whose practice consistently bridged visual art, literature and performance, and whose vision continues to resonate across disciplines.

Did you even have a childhood if you didn’t turn the hole-punched pages of The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Originally published in 1969, this children’s classic will be celebrated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, marking 50 years since the book’s Japanese release (Japan was the first place the beloved caterpillar ever appeared in print).

Prepare to feast your eyes upon 180 objects – all bursting with bold bright colours, playful patterns and Eric Carle’s specially curated collages. Over 27 picture books will also feature, offering a deep dive into the ingenuity of Carle’s imagination. The late American author and illustrator was famed for his fresh take on storytelling; simple shapes are layered with textured hand-painted tissue paper, resulting in whimsical works that were deceptively clever and remain iconic to this day.

Held at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, this ambitious exhibition reconsiders surrealism as a far-reaching cultural force that has reshaped both art and everyday life.

Defined by André Breton in 1924 as a practice grounded in the ‘omnipotence of dreams’ and the pursuit of a ‘superior reality’, surrealism drew deeply on Freudian psychoanalysis to unlock the subconscious. While its dreamlike imagery and unsettling juxtapositions are widely recognised in painting and photography, the exhibition reveals how surrealist thinking extended far beyond the gallery, infiltrating advertising, fashion and interior design.

Organised into six thematic sections, the show traces the movement’s expansion across media, examining how techniques such as automatism, collage and dépaysement (‘disorientation’) transformed both visual culture and lived environments.

Masterpieces by leading figures of the genre, including Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Man Ray and Giorgio de Chirico, are shown alongside rare objects, posters, photographs and design works. Highlights include Magritte’s ‘The Museum of the King’, Elsa Schiaparelli’s iconic fashion designs, and striking examples of surrealist advertising and interiors. Drawing on major collections throughout Japan, the exhibition offers a timely reappraisal of surrealism’s enduring power to unsettle reality – and reimagine it.

Enter the imaginative realm of Japanese mythology this spring at Warehouse Terrada’s digital art exhibit. The humorous yokai figures here, brought to life using cutting-edge 3D graphics and projection mapping technology, are demons, spirits and supernatural monsters from ancient folklore.

Expect to see yokai monsters from artworks such as ‘Hyakki Yagyo Emaki’ and ‘Hyakumonogatari’, as well as realistically recreated oni ogres, tengu goblins, duck-like kappa river monsters, and tsukumogami spirits that seemingly appear right in front of you. While you’re there, don’t miss the exhibit of actual ukiyo-e prints of yokai by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, or the detailed explanations of Edo-period (1603–1868) and Meiji-era (1868–1912) yokai paintings, made possible through cooperation with historians of the Nishio City Iwase Bunko antiquarian book museum and Shodoshima’s Yokai Art Museum.

Tickets are now on sale via Rakuten Travel Experiences, KKDay, Klook, Lawson Ticket and Trip.com.

Prepare your ponchos and panniers, as Harajuku J-fashion icon Sebastian Masuda has opened his first large-scale solo exhibition in years in Hyper Museum Hanno. The exhibition, running from March 14 to August 30, is packed with psychedelic candy-coloured installation rooms, art pieces and sculptures by Masuda himself, created over the years and brought to Japan for the event.

The exhibition unfolds across six themed spaces presented in a loose chronology, tracing Masuda’s formative experiences and how he arrived at his own understanding of kawaii after navigating personal conflicts.

While it’s taking place a bit outside central Tokyo, the exhibition offers an approachable but deep dive into Harajuku kawaii while prompting a look at where the culture is headed next. Be sure to visit the museum pop-up shop, which stocks exclusive T-shirts, stickers, omamori amulets and more.

Tickets are now on sale via Asoview, Artsticker, Lawson Ticket and Seven Ticket.

Internationally recognised photographer and film director Mika Ninagawa is hosting a solo exhibition at the homey and intimate DDDArt art gallery in Shimokitazawa this spring. Much smaller in scale than the likes of her recent projects in Kyoto, at Expo 2025 and Tokyo Node, the exhibition takes a step back to revisit Ninagawa’s body of work, from her early career to her latest creations.

Coinciding with the launch of her latest photo book with the same name, the exhibition brings the artist’s worldview to life in a physical space. As if the vibrant pages of the book were superimposed onto reality, the tatami-floored kominka folk house is reborn with shimmering crystal strands, red and pink paint splatters and super-saturated photo prints.

Running until May 31, the exhibit is only a short stroll away from Shimokitazawa, where Ninagawa herself spent over a decade in her formative years. Why not take a detour towards Sangenjaya for a creative journey on your next visit to the area?

Donald Judd was one of the most decisive figures of twentieth-century art; an artist whose rigorous thinking reshaped the conditions under which art is made and experienced. Emerging from painting in the early 1960s, Judd developed three-dimensional works that rejected illusion and hierarchy, insisting instead on clarity, material presence and spatial integrity.

Beyond form, he was equally concerned with context: how, where and for how long a work should exist. His writings, architectural projects and advocacy for permanent installations reveal an artist for whom art could never be separated from its environment.

The Watari-Um’s ‘Judd | Marfa’ traces its protagonist’s radical vision through the lens of his life and work in Marfa, Texas. After leaving New York in the 1970s, Judd transformed former military and industrial buildings in the remote desert town into sites for the permanent installation of his own work and that of artists including Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain. These spaces, later formalised through the Chinati Foundation, remain preserved as Judd intended.

The exhibition brings together early paintings from the 1950s, key three-dimensional works from the 1960s to the 1990s, and extensive archival materials (drawings, plans, videos and documents) that illuminate Judd’s conception of Marfa as a total environment for art, architecture and living.

A special section revisits The Sculpture of Donald Judd (1978), organised by museum founder Shizuko Watari, underscoring the museum’s long-standing engagement with Judd’s legacy. Together, these materials articulate Judd’s enduring conviction that the installation of art is inseparable from its meaning.

Katsushika Hokusai is all the rage in Tokyo. Last year saw several acclaimed exhibitions dive into the ukiyo-e master’s ginormous oeuvre, and the Edo native’s iconic art has also been the subject of some pretty remarkable reinterpretations lately.

Next up in highlighting the printmaking genius is the National Museum of Western Art, whose exhibition ‘Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji from the Iuchi Collection’ marks the first public unveiling of this remarkable group of works placed on deposit at the museum in 2024.

The exhibition showcases all 46 prints from Hokusai’s iconic series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji (c. 1830–33), alongside two additional impressions of his most beloved masterpieces, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (commonly known as ‘The Great Wave’) and Clear Day with a Southern Breeze (known as ‘Red Fuji’). You can look forward to exceptionally well-preserved impressions, including a rare indigo-printed ‘Blue Fuji’ version of Clear Day with a Southern Breeze.

Bringing together all 48 works, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience Hokusai’s enduring vision of Mt Fuji within Japan’s premier museum of Western art – a fitting setting for appreciating his art’s timeless dialogue between East and West.

The historic Shiseido Gallery presents a tribute to the visionary graphic designer Masayoshi Nakajo. Five years after his passing, the exhibition revisits Nakajo’s long and influential relationship with the cosmetics company through around 200 works spanning more than four decades.

Nakajo played a pivotal role in shaping Shiseido’s visual culture, producing posters, packaging and advertising designs that blended playful experimentation with refined elegance. Visitors will encounter iconic graphics created for Shiseido Parlour, including biscuit packaging, wrapping papers and promotional posters, alongside original drawings shown publicly for the first time.

A central focus of the exhibition is Nakajo’s work as art director of Hanatsubaki, Shiseido’s influential cultural magazine. A special reading corner allows visitors to browse some 350 issues published between 1982 and 2011, offering insight into his distinctive editorial approach, where typography, illustration and photography interact in dynamic visual rhythms.

Known for his free-hand compositions and intuitive use of form, Nakajo once said he always chose ‘the design most likely to sing’. This exhibition captures that spirit, where letters become melody, images move like choreography, and graphic design reveals its expressive, almost musical potential.

Having spent over four decades redefining the relationship between art, technology and desire, Hajime Sorayama is one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Noted for his iconic Sexy Robot series and his pioneering fusion of human sensuality and mechanical precision, Sorayama’s work has influenced generations of creators across art, design and popular culture – from RoboCop to Dior. His visionary approach, uniting the sensual with the synthetic, has earned him international acclaim and a lasting place in the subcultural art canon.

Opening this spring at the Creative Museum Tokyo, ‘Sorayama: Light, Reflection, Transparency -Tokyo-’ marks the artist’s largest retrospective in Japan to date, following its acclaimed debut in Shanghai. The exhibition traces Sorayama’s artistic evolution from his first robot painting in 1978 to his latest digital and sculptural works. Visitors will encounter highlights such as the original Aibo robot design for Sony, the artwork for Aerosmith’s Just Push Play album, and an immersive installation that embodies Sorayama’s lifelong pursuit of capturing light, air and reflections.

By blending futuristic imagination with classical mastery, Sorayama invites viewers to contemplate a world where human emotion and machine form merge in radiant harmony.

The Artizon Museum invites art aficionados to immerse themselves in a vibrant space of dialogue and imagination with ‘Katarium’, an exhibition that explores art as a site of narration. The title combines the Japanese word katari (‘tell’ or ‘narrate’) with the suffix -arium, evoking a realm where stories unfold.

The exhibition seeks to reflect on the myriad conversations that surround artworks, from the artist’s private musings in the studio to the audience’s impressions before a finished piece. Through approximately 60 works spanning diverse eras and media, including two National Treasures, seven Important Cultural Properties and five Important Art Objects, ‘Katarium’ invites viewers to listen to these silent dialogues across time.

Highlights include Edo-period (1603–1868) folding screens thought to have been created for samurai lords, mythological paintings from the Meiji (1868–1912) and Taisho (1912–1926) eras, and poetic lithographs by the American social realist artist Ben Shahn. Additionally, traditional scrolls such as Zen Proverb Scroll Fragment and Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Humans are reassembled from fragments, allowing visitors to witness ‘reunions’ of masterpieces long separated.

From the newly restored Illustrated Tale of the Heiji Rebellion: The Tokiwamaki Scroll to the mysterious Edo Tenka Festival Screens, ‘Katarium’ offers an evocative journey through Japan’s artistic storytelling, where each work whispers, greets and remembers across the centuries.

Hirohiko Araki began serialising JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1986, launching a saga that has since spanned decades, generations of protagonists and shifting aesthetic paradigms. Renowned for its flamboyant characters, bold compositions and philosophical undercurrents, JoJo stands apart for its synthesis of classical art, fashion, music and pop culture. With cumulative circulation exceeding 120 million copies, the series has become a global phenomenon, while Araki himself has become recognised as a singular figure bridging manga and contemporary art.

From January 8 to June 28, the Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage Tokyo Gallery presents this three-part exhibition that foregrounds Araki’s work through the lens of fine-art printmaking. The exhibition has previously been shown in San Francisco and Kyoto, but this marks the first time Araki’s lithographs and lenticular works are displayed in Tokyo.

To allow visitors to encounter as wide a variety of works as possible, the exhibition unfolds in three rotations: Part 1 (January 8–February 23), Part 2 (March 3–April 19) and Part 3 (April 28–June 28). At the heart of the display are nine lithographic prints, produced in 2025 at the request of Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage and representing Araki’s first foray into lithography. Unlike conventional manga printing, which reduces drawings to stark black-and-white data, lithography preserves the artist’s hand with remarkable fidelity. Drawing directly onto metal plates with lithographic pencils and chalk, Araki has embraced the medium’s irreversibility: lines cannot be erased, lending each mark a palpable tension and decisiveness.

The resulting prints, featuring figures such as Jotaro Kujo and Dio, reveal a new intimacy with Araki’s lines, from the controlled force of slow strokes to the rhythmic energy of rapid shading. Each work is produced in an edition of 100, printed by master lithographer Satoru Itazu.

Complementing these are lenticular works depicting protagonists from Parts 1 through 6 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Utilising a technique with roots in early 20th-century optical experimentation, these prints create the illusion of depth and motion, activated only through the viewer’s movement. As one shifts position, time seems to unfold within a single image – an effect that resonates with the manipulation of duration and perspective, a familiar technique in manga.

Together, the lithographic and lenticular works position JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure as an evolving artistic practice – and one that continues to expand the possibilities of manga within the broader history of visual art.

Andrius Arutiunian (born 1991) is an Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer whose practice unfolds at the intersection of sound, ritual and speculative cosmology. Working across installation, performance and moving image, he approaches listening as a hybrid and political act, treating music as an architecture of distorted time. His work, shown at major international exhibitions including the Venice, Shanghai, Gwangju and Lyon Biennales, explores how belief systems, vernacular knowledge and collective rituals shape alternative models of social and temporal order.

‘Obol’, Arutiunian’s first solo exhibition in Japan, takes place from February 20 to May 31 at Le Forum. Presented by Ginza Maison Hermès and curated by Tomoya Iwata, the exhibition imagines a futuristic vision of the underworld, a speculative space where myth, sound and ceremony converge. Drawing on ancient cosmologies, esoteric texts and fragments of ritual, ‘Obol’ is conceived as a ‘club for the dead’, where time becomes viscous and hypnotic, and where the boundaries between past, present and future dissolve.

Central to the exhibition is a new body of work using bitumen, a petroleum-derived material once imbued with sacred meaning but now relegated to utilitarian use. As both material and metaphor, it anchors a meditation on Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, evoked through silver obols, serpentine forms and generative mythological imagery. Layered soundscapes weave through the space, binding playfulness and solemnity into a cold, ritualistic anthem. Through its speculative and immersive environment, ‘Obol’ invites visitors to step into a liminal journey that questions how future myths, rituals and afterlives might be imagined.

This winter, the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo presents a landmark exhibition tracing the evolution of Japan’s landscape printmaking from the twilight of the Edo period (mid-1800s) to the dawn of modernity.

At the heart of the survey stands Kiyochika Kobayashi (1847–1915), often called ‘the last ukiyo-e artist’. Published from 1876, his Tokyo Famous Places series transformed the traditional woodblock print aesthetic by infusing it with Western notions of light and shadow. Through his ‘light ray paintings’, Kiyochika, as he was known, captured the melancholic beauty of a city in transition, the lingering spirit of Edo illuminated by the glow of modernisation.

His vision, steeped in nostalgia yet alive with innovation, profoundly influenced the shin-hanga (‘new prints’) movement that emerged in the early 20th century under artists such as Hiroshi Yoshida and Hasui Kawase. These successors revived ukiyo-e craftsmanship while reimagining Japan’s landscapes for a new era.

Drawn from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, ‘From Kiyochika to Hasui’ reunites these masterpieces with their homeland, illuminating how light, both literal and emotional, guided Japan’s printmaking into the modern age.

Emerging in the wake of the Margaret Thatcher era, the Young British Artists (YBAs) and their contemporaries embraced shock, irreverence and entrepreneurial flair. While the YBA label (applied after the landmark 1988 ‘Freeze’ exhibition organised by Damien Hirst) was often contested, it came to define a generation that reimagined what art could be. Painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation all became tools for probing themes of identity, consumer culture and shifting social structures. 

The National Art Center’s ‘YBA & Beyond: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection’ is the first exhibition in Japan devoted exclusively to British art of the 1990s. Featuring around 100 works by some 60 artists, the show captures a turbulent and transformative period in British culture, when politics, society and art collided to spark a wave of radical experimentation.

Highlights include works by Hirst, Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen, Lubaina Himid, Wolfgang Tillmans and Julian Opie, alongside others who reshaped contemporary art on a global stage. More than a retrospective, ‘YBA & Beyond’ offers a vivid portrait of 1990s Britain, an era when art intersected with music, fashion and subculture, leaving a legacy that continues to resonate today.