EXQUISITE, CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ART BRUT: A TRAVELING EXHIBITION EXPLORES ABSTRACTION AND DREAMS

A TRAVELING SURVEY OF SEVEN ARTISTS’ WORKS HIGHLIGHTS A RANGE OF ABSTRACT-ART STYLES AND EXPRESSIONS



Art Brut 2024 Touring Exhibition
アール・ブリュット2024巡回展
抽象のラビリンス 夢みる色と形
“Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form”
Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery
September 28 – December 22, 2024

Katsushika Symphony Hills
Main Building, Floor 2, Galleries 1 and 2
6-33-1 Tateishi, Katsushika-ku, Tokyo 124-0012
(Five-minute walk from Aoto Station on the Keisei Line.)
January 17 – 26, 2025

Mitaka City Arts Center, Floor B1, Exhibition room 1
6-12-14 Kamirenjaku, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 124-0012
(One-minute walk from Hachiman-mae bus stop (accessible from JR Mitaka Station, south exit, bus-boarding platforms 5, 6, and 7.) January 31 – February 12, 2025


by Edward M. Gómez


TOKYO — Almost five years ago, in February 2020, just a few weeks before the coronavirus outbreak was declared a global pandemic, the Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery opened here in the Japanese capital’s popular Shibuya district, which is known for its shopping and entertainment attractions.

Façade of the building in Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya district in which the Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery is located. The graphics on the windows facing the street announce the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition. This venue is a division of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Its exhibitions often focus on the work of self-taught artists, and admission is always free of charge. Photo by Edward M. Gómez

Located on the first floor of a city-government building diagonally across from the main entrance of the PARCO Shibuya department store, this still-young art venue is a division of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (which is known by the acronym “MOT”). Much of its programming focuses on the presentation of works made by self-taught artists, but it has also shown works created by formally schooled artists. Each year, it presents three exhibitions, each of which is accompanied by an attractively designed, well-illustrated, bilingual (Japanese and English) catalogue.

In the short period of time since it opened to the public, Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery has become one of the most important venues in all of Japan for the presentation of paintings, drawings, mixed-media objects, and other creations conceived of and produced by self-taught art-makers. Each year, it presents three main exhibitions, each of which is accompanied by a well-illustrated, handsomely designed catalogue that is published in bilingual, Japanese-and-English editions.

A view of the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition as it appeared at the Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery, the first stop on its three-venue tour. The exhibition’s distinctive installation design was created by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and his design team at Atelier Bow-Wow. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

In 2024, the year that has just ended, I was honored to be invited to guest-curate an exhibition of contemporary Japanese art brut featuring the works of seven artists from different regions of Japan. This curating assignment recognized my longtime work as a specialist in the related fields of art brut and outsider art, as well as another focus of my research, writing, and curating over a period of several decades. That is the history of Japanese modern art and developments in Japanese contemporary art.

Since the early 2000s, my work in all of these fields has come together in my ongoing coverage of the evolution of Japan’s own art brut phenomenon and the institutions that have helped promote it. In 2018, for example, for the Collection de l’Art Brut, the museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, that is the world’s leading institution in its specialized field, I curated the exhibition “Art brut du Japon, un autre regard” (“Art Brut from Japan: Another Look”), which featured the work of 23 contemporary Japanese creators of art brut paintings, drawings, ceramic sculptures, and mixed-media assemblages.

Another view of the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition showing how its free-standing walls for displaying artworks, made of corrugated cardboard, emulate the shape of traditional, European-style hedge mazes. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

“Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form,” the exhibition on which I collaborated with the superb curatorial and administrative team of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery and with the director and design team of Atelier Bow-Wow, a Tokyo-based architecture-and-design studio, has finished its run at its originating venue and now will move on for two shorter presentations at cultural centers in other parts of the greater Tokyo Metropolitan area.

From January 17 through 26, it will be on view in the gallery at Katsushika Symphony Hills, in the northeastern part of the capital. Then it will be presented again, from January 31 through February 12, at the Mitaka City Arts Center, which also houses exhibition spaces. This cultural center is located in the suburban town of Mitaka, which lies just west of central Tokyo and can easily be reached by one of the Japan Railway commuter lines that departs from Shinjuku Station. Admission to the exhibition at both of these venues will be free of charge.

Left: The artist Eiichi Shibata, whose abstract drawings inspired by the character and appearance of soap bubbles, are on view in the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition. Right: brutjournal’s editor in chief, Edward M. Gómez, a longtime specialist in Japanese modern art and in the related fields of art brut and outsider art. He curated the traveling exhibition.

In developing the theme of this exhibition, whose title is “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form,” my colleagues and I aimed to call attention to certain affinities between the nature and qualities of abstract art and the character of dreams. In various walk-through talks that I presented at the Shibuya venue, I introduced visitors to the works of the exhibition’s participating artists: Gataro, Shun Ito, Emi Matsui, Eiichi Shibata, Miho Tsuchihashi, Koya Tsushima, and Yuki Yanai.

As I described the various forms of abstract expressions these artists have developed and that they employ to make their drawings and paintings on paper or canvas, I pointed out how viewers of an artwork that does not explicitly depict a familiar, recognizable subject in a representational way are often quick to ask, “What does this particular work mean?”

What secrets might an artist’s abstract mode of making art be concealing or obfuscating?

The Hiroshima-based artist Gataro’s drawings of ordinary cleaning rags transform his humble subjects into exquisite objects. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

Similarly, for countless millennia, we humans have been fascinated and intrigued by the often confounding imagery of our dreams. What do they mean? What kind of knowledge might they be trying to convey and, if accurately interpreted, can they really be understood to foretell the future?

Thus, in the spirit of the mysterious, even unknowable character and oddly beguiling atmospheres that tend to be associated both with works of abstract art and with the fleeting content of dreams, our exhibition found its form. Echoing its main themes, its custom-made design featured free-standing walls made of sturdy corrugated cardboard in a spiraling labyrinth form.

Demonstrating the flexibility of its cardboard-based design scheme, Atelier Bow-Wow created a set of small vitrines to showcase several of Gataro’s drawings. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

These elements, along with cardboard-covered walls in the exhibition’s galleries and a free-standing, low-rise wall holding small vitrines for some of the artist Gataro’s drawings, were created by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, the founder-director of Atelier Bow-Wow, in collaboration with some of his studio’s talented young designers.

The overall shape of the exhibition’s free-standing display walls brings to mind the forms of traditional hedge mazes in the gardens of old European palaces. Tsukamoto chose industrial-strength corrugated cardboard as the main material for his designs as a way of paying homage to one of the more common found materials — everyday corrugated cardboard, often rescued from the trash — that turns up regularly in the work of art brut and outsider artists. (That’s because, often, such artists, who tend to live and work on the margins of mainstream culture and society, do not have the financial resources with which to be able to afford high-quality art supplies. Instead, they use found materials, like cardboard and paper scraps, and inexpensive paints.)

Some of the artists whose works are on view in “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” are associated with art-making studios hosted by institutions for disabled people. At one such facility, Kobo Shu in Kanagawa, a city in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, Tsukamoto was interested to discover how its participating artists’ works were neatly gathered and stored in a professional-looking archive. Inspired by what he saw during that visit to Kobo Shu during the research phase of his work on the exhibition’s installation design, he created a section within it that alludes to an artists’ shared workshop and artwork-storing archive. In this part of the exhibition, stacks of flat storage boxes may be seen filling the compartments of a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit.

An untitled drawing made with pencil and paint on paper by Gataro, depicting on of his cleaning rags. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

In their own ways, each exhibiting artist’s works relate to the exhibition’s poetic theme, which hints at the relationship between abstract art and human dreams.

Some notes about the artists and their works:

Gataro is a 75-year-old janitor who worked at a shopping center in Hiroshima. He never studied art-making at an art school. His pictures depict objects and people he encountered in his everyday surroundings, including his friends, and the brooms and cleaning supplies he used to do his job. Often, Gataro picked up pieces of paper trash that he saved and used to make his drawings.

The exhibition presents a selection of 30 of Gataro’s drawings of one of his favorite subjects — his cleaning rags (known as zōkin in Japanese). Using plain pencil, colored pastel chalks, and sometimes daubs of white paint, Gataro depicts his cleaning rags with the skill of Renaissance artists who used the chiaroscuro technique to give their subjects a sculptural quality. In his drawings, Gataro’s humble cleaning rags become lustrous, jewel-like objects.

The young artist Shun Ito with some of his drawings in the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition. He uses charcoal to make them. Photo by Edward M. Gómez

Shun Ito is a young artist who is based in Mie Prefecture, where he participates in the art-workshop program at Kibo no Sono (The Garden of Hope), a facility for disabled people. He also performs as the lead vocalist in a rock band.

Ito uses charcoal to make pictures in which he abstracts his subjects, which often come from nature, including fish and snakes. Ito’s drawings are packed with expressive smudges and energetic lines.

Shun Ito, “Mammoth,” 2022, charcoal on charcoal paper, 19.8 x 25.8 inches (50.3 x 65.6 centimeters). Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

Based in Beppu, the hot-springs resort town on the east coast of the island of Kyushu, Emi Matsui, a young female artist, makes vibrantly colored drawings. She is also an avid practitioner of shodō (Japanese calligraphy). Inspired by nature, her colorful paintings on paper often feature loose grids or circular forms and allusions to flowers and plants.

Matsui’s joyous-feeling images recall the experiments of modern artists of the early 20th century who used abstraction as a means of evoking a sense of the spiritual.

The artist Emi Matsui (right), with her drawings on display in the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition and with one of her calligraphy works, which she shared with visitors to the gallery who attended an artists’ talk during the run of the show in Tokyo. Photo by Edward M. Gómez
Emi Matsui, “La France,” paint on paper, 16.14 x 12.52 inches (41 x 31.8 centimeters). Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

Eiichi Shibata takes part in the art-making program at Kobo Shu. He is known for his distinctive abstract language, which he uses to make paintings on canvas or paper. Normally, he uses colored gel pens to make his paintings, most of which have similar titles referring to soap (or “sekken” in Japanese).

Shibata is fascinated by the physical characteristics of soap, and in his compositions, he depicts soap bubbles as dot-like, abstract forms. Sometimes his luminous compositions are very dense and packed with dots of color or thickets of tangled lines.

Eiichi Shibata, “せっけんのせ” (“The せ of Soap”), ink on paper, 15 x 21.2 inches (38 x 54 centimeters). Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

By contrast, the artist Yuki Yanai constructs his compositions by drawing many rectangular shapes, which he fills with color. These clusters of rectangular shapes form loose-feeling, almost invisible grids. Sometimes, Yanai buries faces and other, symbol-like elements in different areas of his compositions as he plays with the contrasting character of his colors.

An untitled drawing by Yuki Yanai, ink on paper, 15 x 21.2 inches (38 x 54 centimeters). Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

Tsuchihashi Miho, who lives in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, works in a spontaneous manner; whenever she sets out to make a new painting or drawing, its composition and subject matter remain unpredictable.

Tsuchihashi makes drawings and paintings, clay figurines, and hand-sewn animal dolls using thread and fabric. Her paintings on paper offer a variety of abstract expressions, including watery explosions of color and restrained, minimalist compositions featuring only simple circles or groups of parallel lines.

The artist Miho Tsuchihashi with two of her more minimalist abstract works on paper in the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition. Photo by Edward M. Gómez

Koya Tsushima, who lives in Aomori Prefecture, in the north of Japan, makes paintings and drawings in a variety of styles, usually on paper. His energetic compositions are monochromatic or filled with color. Sometimes, Tsushima uses only a repeated shape, drawn with a simple, thin line, to construct dense, randomly patterned compositions.

A variety of abstract works by the artist Koya Tsushima on view in the “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form” exhibition. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

Tsushima’s pictures might feature abstracted heads or groups of faces and other subjects, but his art can also be completely abstract, as in a small, all-green picture in our exhibition, which seems to refer to nature, like a close-up photo of a patch of growing grass.

In using cardboard to create the exhibition’s undulating walls and interior spaces for displaying artists’ works, and, in the exhibition’s second room, to create a tall, artwork-storage wall, Tsukamoto and his design team evoked several different aspects of the world of art brut artists.

A floor-to-ceiling storage wall and artists’ worktables, surrounded by displays of Gataro’s drawings, evoke the atmosphere of one of the art-making studios for disabled people that are associated with the art brut phenomenon in Japan. Photo by Takeshi Yamazaki, courtesy of Tokyo Shibuyakoen-dori Gallery

Like the artworks on view in “Abstract Labyrinths: Dreaming Color and Form,” the exhibition’s clever, unexpected use of ordinary cardboard reminds us that, in abstract art as in our dreams, the unusual is normal, and what cannot easily be understood is as substantive as any fact about the so-called real, material world.

The works in this exhibition celebrate the power of art that is dreamy and abstract — art that is magical, enchanting, and filled with wonder.