WELCOME TO brutjournal!
SO EXACTLY WHAT ARE WE UP TO HERE?
WELL WE’RE INTERESTED IN FORMS OF ART AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION THAT BREAK THE MOLD; THAT ARE FRESH, DIFFERENT, EXPERIMENTAL, DARING, AND DEFY FAMILIAR LABELS; AND THAT, FOR ALL THEIR INNOVATION OR FAR-OUT FORM, UNABASHEDLY CELEBRATE AND REAFFIRM THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
SOUND GOOD?

Opened in February 2020, just before the global pandemic erupted, Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery is a nonprofit art space sponsored by the Japanese capital region’s government through its Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture. It focuses on the work of self-taught, art brut, and outsider artists. Its current exhibition features unusual craft works created by Japanese senior citizens.
TOKYO EXHIBITION: GETTING TO KNOW “MOM’S ART”

FINE CRAFTSMANSHIP AND UNBRIDLED IMAGINATION MEET IN OBJECTS THAT ARE CLEVER, EYE-CATCHING, AND FUN

by Edward M. Gómez

TOKYO — brutjournal readers know that our thematic brief includes looking at art forms that are hard to classify and new, inventive ways of making and thinking about art and its expressive power that make us reconsider those subjects from the ground up. Now, in Tokyo, our intellectual-aesthetic fervor might have met its match.

The source of our wonder and delight: the new exhibition Museum of Mom's Art, which is on view through April 10, 2022 at Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, a non-profit art venue in the Japanese capital’s vibrant Shibuya district.

An installation view of the exhibition Museum of Mom's Art, which is on view through April 10, 2022 at Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery. All photos by Edward M. Gómez for brutjournal

The gallery is sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture and is managed in collaboration with curatorial specialists from Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Focusing primarily on the work of self-taught artists, it was inaugurated in early 2020, about a month before the coronavirus pandemic erupted worldwide. Still, during the two-year pandemic period, it managed to mount and present an ongoing series of imaginative exhibitions, all of which were well researched and attractively designed and installed.

Crochet is one of the techniques used by the senior citizens who create what has come to be known in Japan as “Mom’s art.”
LOG IN or SUBSCRIBE
to read the whole article.