The technology of digital printing gives these pieces a purity of color and a crispness of edge that would not be possible in any other medium. Edwards cleverly separates the image from the whiteness of the paper background by using subtle cream-colored ink to color the “sky.” In his world, as in much of Tokyo, architecture is delineated only by colorful signage and the sky serves simply as a pale backdrop to the action below.

Like Edwards’ digital prints, the large-scale paintings in the gallery’s main space appear abstract, forming dark camouflage-like patterns. But again closer attention is repaid as each canvas reveals a detailed cityscape rendered in strips of color that could be boulevards, empty lots, or parks. Multi-scaled grids suggest buildings of varying heights and typologies.

In fact these paintings present multiple views of the same cityscape. All of them were executed as variations upon the theme of another, larger painting that has occupied Edwards’ time for the past year: a monumental work called The Triumph of Democracy. Commissioned for a corporate lobby in Washington D.C., Edwards’ home base, the painting depicts a single view of an imaginary metropolis that he and his studio assistants have painstakingly constructed using computer software.

Understandably, Edwards was eager to explore his digital city in the additional views exhibited here. In an email he wrote, “to create [The Triumph of Democracy] I constructed a virtual city […] and the space had a reality to it beyond the limits of the virtual camera I used for the composition. So I had a real desire to see what this city would look like from different angles. Because of the complexity of the architecture that I create, it’s not possible to see all of these buildings at the same time in the virtual space. The city exists as a hypothetical first, as a grouping of simple blocks, and only after a camera is fixed can the hard work of implementing the scene begin. Each building must be loaded then rendered separately. These images are then pieced together in Photoshop.”

For the pieces in this show, Edwards used a similar technique to construct birds’ eye views of his capital. The resulting images show fragmented high-rises, busy streets and flashing lights set against a textured backdrop of asphalt gray.

Edwards’ one-man show here in Tokyo coincides with the group show “Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes” at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, where his paintings are on display alongside several architectural projects. It makes sense given the undeniably spatial implications of his work.

“People often ask me if I trained to be an architect because my work is so much about cities and architecture,” Edwards says. “But I really came to it from the ground up, first as an ordinary observer of my suburban and urban surroundings and later through my own research of architectural history. I think that I have architecture in my bones because I’m by nature a utopian and I believe in problem solving. At the same time I can see what a letdown almost all utopian architecture can be. So much of my work is about that disconnect between the hope and aspirations of the plans on the one hand and the almost inevitable failure of those plans on the other.”

With almost no copy, the pieces, mostly advertising posters but also magazine covers and package designs, are, well, graphic. Compared to today’s emphasis on information and cleverness these examples of days gone by seem to lean closer to art than advertising. Though to be fair to the contemporary era, it is unlikely that a retrospective of Japanese turn-of-the-millennium graphic design would reflect the cacophonic reality that is the Tokyo subway.

The exhibition does, however, begin with a selection of posters taken from a public context, primarily ads for household products. Here we can see the half-century-old graphic rendition of the pleasure of a cold beer, the ease of a pre-shrunk blouse, and the pictorial imaginings of a modern, international lifestyle circa 1950 — a delightful vocabulary of refrigerators, sausages, and parrots.

More than a few well-known brands, such as Asahi Beer and Meiji Chocolate, exemplify the anticipated tension between traditional and modern in postwar, occupied Japan. There is plenty of cardinal red and indigo but even more sunny yellow and sky blue, and while characters haven’t taken over yet, some of those Meiji ads are damn cute. Note to advertisers: invest in talented artists and ensure that your brand gets additional visibility at future design retrospectives.

Next, the exhibit delves more into the world of graphic design itself, with a look at different contexts (like designs for cultural activities) and media (like wrapping paper and book covers). While technique is not a major topic, a brief display of the tools of the time serves as a greater reminder than the designs themselves of how the times have changed. And speaking of times, as the accompanying text explains, the 1950s was a time of real growth in the demand for graphic designers, as the transition into an era of increasing consumer products led to, as in the West, an increase in the number of advertisements and packages to be designed.

The exhibition also demonstrates that graphic designers have long been recognized in Japan, which made me wonder to what extent this has shored up Japan’s position as an international star in the field today. A section covers the “Graphic 55″ exhibition, held in 1955 at the Takashimaya department store in Nihombashi. This exhibition within an exhibition features the works of eight leading designers of the day, and along with another selection of award-winning works from the Japanese Ad Artists’ Club, presents a neat context for the retrospectively arranged works in the opening section.

Should you finish the exhibition wondering what a collection of current designs might look like, the Printing Museum’s response to that is the 2008 edition of the Graphic Trial. This 3rd edition of the annual invitation of four noteworthy designers to experiment technically around a theme, in this case “execution of beauty,” with both their final works and works in progress on display in a separate (free!) gallery.

Curated by Mami Kataoka, senior curator at the Mori Art Museum, the two-room show gives objects a movement and life as they travel from conception to execution to dismantling. They exist not as static objects, but as objects that serve as a record for an entire history and carry with them a plotted out future.

This story can be seen in the pile of mail by the door. The piece is called All The Best, and came with the instruction that “all mail sent to the gallery for the duration of the exhibition be left unopened by the door.” Toshie Fukasaku at Wako seemed only mildly disturbed that she wouldn’t be able to check their mail until July 19th when the show closes. Beier and Lund’s work uses audience members as their medium, relying on their imagination and curiosity to grasp the life of a piece. All the Best exists in the audience’s imagination: Given that a considerable pile of mail had already built up on the exhibition’s opening day, imagine poor Fukasaku-san catching up on a month’s worth (See here for an ongoing report on the growth of this work).

Nina Beier and Marie Lund, both Danish, met at the Royal College of Art in London and begun collaborating in 2004. Their first book, Plans for Other Days, was a quirky set of instructional photographs created and realized with classmates from the Royal College of Art and published by Booth-Clibborn in 2005. Beier’s white blonde mane is omnipresent in the photographs, tied to the branches of a tree, or taking plants out for a walk. Now it is short and curly and she is always smiling. Lund appears less frequently in the book. In one photograph her hair is combed over her face. She is slight and attentive, choosing words carefully in her clear British accent.

Kataoka met Beier and Lund at Art Basel and included them in her show “Laughing in a Foreign Language”, held at the Hayward Gallery in London earlier this year. Kataoka was drawn to the “subtle humor in their objects and video pieces.” But says that while she loves group shows as well as solo shows, curating a group exhibition is “like a big storm, like having a date with thirty people at the same time.” When she was asked to curate a show at Wako, Kataoka immediately thought of Beier and Lund. She says she was interested in putting the collective nature of their work into a Japanese context, because “Japanese people are known as people who look at each other for how to behave.” She says she “thought it would be really interesting to bring them to Japan and let them do whatever they like.”

“Whatever they like” comes in the form of ten pieces, nine of which are being shown for the first time in Tokyo, after being conceptualized in a two-month residency at Tokyo Wonder Site. Beier and Lund drew on feelings of separation they felt in Japan, both being distant from their homes and more importantly, distant from Japanese society. The work on show at Wako isn’t a Japanese version of their what they would normally produce, but they were, Lund says, “quite indirectly inspired” by Japan. The pieces are imbued with a “sense of distance,” that came from their “persistent feeling of being an outsider, not completely understanding what it was that we were looking at.” She explains this “distance between understanding and meaning,” as central to their work.

This distance is expressed in The Archives (World Peace). A quick glance might give you the impression that these mismatched frames are empty, but in fact they contain posters that have been carefully folded horizontally in two, so that you cannot see the image. Faintly, one can see the outline of political statements. Beier and Lund found peace posters that form invisible alliances—Finland supporting peace in Chile, Cuba for Korea, and so on. It had been their intent to create a political piece while in Japan, but struck by the difference in the Japanese way of expressing compared to their Danish extroversion, they came up with The Archives.

It was this separation between what is said and what is meant that fascinated Beier and Lund. Beier says that through looking at the work of Mono-ha in Japan they saw that “the material surface of things had such a strong presence, but that the content was excised from things.” For History makes a Young Man Old, Beier and Lund bought a clear crystal ball from a Tokyo shop and rolled it through Yoyogi Park on an hour and a half journey that ended at Wako in Shinjuku. The ball is thoroughly scratched all over, impossible to see through. Again, the process behind the making is what fascinates Beier and Lund. Their objects have a past and future, often with explicit instructions for the buyers of such works. In their dice piece 42, Beier and Lund threw seven dice each, the faces of which added up to forty-two. Any prospective buyers who wish to install this work in their home must agree to roll the dice themselves until the faces add up to forty-two. Kataoka explains this particular work as being a “record of what they do,” an object representing an entire process insisting to the viewer that their work is never “finished. The piece continues to change after the show’s closing.

Beier and Lund say that their work is always created out of a moment of inspiration, which then turns into months of conversations and questioning, honing and defending the work to each other. When asked if their collaboration helps them push each other or support each other, both answered quickly, “Push.” Their work is thoughtful and drawn from the legacy of many artists from the 1960s. Kataoka mentions Yoko Ono’s instruction paintings, Lawrence Weiner and Vito Acconci. All three reference Mono-ha repeatedly, saying that they were inspired by their focus on materiality.

They reference the surrealist “exquisite corpse” exercises in which participants fold up a piece of paper, draw part of an image or story and then hands it over to the next person to continue; the independent creations come together as an odd, jointly-constructed image or story that is only revealed in its entirety at the end. Beier and Lund said they created an exquisite corpse with color, painting on sections of paper before folding it and handing it to each other. Beier says, “We never saw the whole thing, just folded it in and in and in.”

In a way this is what the process of the entire show was like. Beier says that they came to Kataoka with “bad little sketches and collages.” However, Kataoka trusted them completely, saying, “I don’t give guidelines to any artists”. Kataoka could see that they were constantly in dialogue and was excited to see what would emerge from it.

While creating their pieces, the two showed in Korea and are already due to show at the ICA, Tate Modern and Gallery One One One in London. They have also been commissioned to show in Italy and in Vienna. For the exhibition at Gallery One One One they plan to start with a solo show of their own work before replacing their pieces one by one with conceptually related pieces by artists they admire, resulting in an unfixed, composite exhibition that metamorphoses according to their curatorial vision.

While Kataoka says that “curating a show is like throwing a single stone into the big ocean of Tokyo,” she emphasizes the relevance and applicability of their work to a Japanese audience. She sees this kind of instructional art and participatory art as being increasingly important, because it pushes the boundaries of the Japanese audience’s understanding of conceptual art. Kataoka sees this show as a natural extension of her own goals of the last ten years, to become “more interested in the role of art and the role of ideas in society,” and take fresh new directions in the conversation.

Beier and Lund say that they are always interested in “intervening with a given situation [or object] and seeing how things will move onward.” Through their collaboration, these three women are intervening with the Japanese art world, injecting process into static objects, humor into every day situations, and adding to a conversation-in-progress between society and art.

Divided into ten sections, or ten “gardens”, the show brings together a diverse collection of work whose relation to the overall garden theme is at times somewhat tenuous. With titles like “The Evening Garden” , “The Documented garden” or “The Garden that Reaches for the Sky”, it gradually becomes apparent that the interpretation of the “garden” in art can be described to encompass, well… almost anything. Nevertheless, such versatility is also the exhibition’s strength, and visitors can encounter work in a diverse range of media from all over the globe, from the early Taisho period through to the present day. The artists featured make for an engaging group show, but at times the juxtaposition of twentieth century icons like Matisse with comparatively obscure artists of today gives the exhibition a disjointed or awkward feel.

The first gallery, the “Grotesque Garden”, is a dimly lit room, with its walls covered in a hand-painted black and white pattern of columns, rosettes and vines — reminiscent of a rococo-style hall. On closer inspection, gargoyles, pop culture characters and cog-driven machinery lurch out. This well tended garden’s absorbing ambience seemed to promise more spatial curiosities, however, what followed was a sobering return to a more conservative gallery space.

This second room, consisting of ink works and watercolours by Michisei Kono (1895-1950), includes framed images depicting rural landscapes, pussy willows and finely rendered studies of oak leaves. The following two sections, titled “Garden of the Studio” and “Garden in the Palm of the Hand”, featured works from the late Meiji, through the Taisho into the early Showa period. Of particular historical worth are works by the Taisho period oil painter, Torao Makino, and a series of magazine issues featuring prints related to the Shin Hanga movement of the early 20th Century that had revitalized wood-block printing and ukiyo-e painting traditions.

The “Evening Garden” and the “Enclosed Garden”, covering the period from 1940 to 1950, continued a more literal approach to the garden theme. Here, with the various works in oil, pencil and woodcut by Makino and a series of illustrative lithographs by Henri Matisse, references to nature, plant life and floral themes are featured prominently.

The last four “gardens” showcase contemporary works spanning the last thirty years. The first thing one notices is the disproportionately large number of works by Tadayoshi Nakabayashi — a veritable miniature retrospective in itself. Nevertheless, his work does fit well with the room’s concept of a “Documented Garden”. A series of fascinating semi-abstract, largely colourless aquatint etchings depicting dead leaves, twigs and other fallen, decaying matter make for a truly engaging display.

The exhibition then took an interesting turn with Benoit Broisat’s ghostly computer animated video projection Bonneville. Bonneville presents a series of silent 3D animations set in a snowy, deserted European castle town where the buildings, seemingly constructed of paper, sway and concertina to create an eerie, passive dystopia.

The ensuing display of abstract, neo-pointillist work by Satoshi Uchiumi demands attention. His bright and airy but meticulous and well-worked paintings beautifully coalesce with the garden concept, it is no wonder they feature prominently in the exhibition’s promotional material. His large green tinted canvas titled Below Colours conveys the feeling of being in the shelter of a great tree, whilst his whimsical but intensively constructed Great Chilio Cosmos is a universe in itself, composed of hundreds of small square allotments of colour.

Yoshiro Suda’s Gerbera stands as an interesting spatial epilogue to the exhibition. This single, contemplative flower, stood on its head on a shelf in the midst a large, empty white room, is a reminder that even the most modest frivolities can redefine a space.

In the end the strength of this exhibition seemed to reside in the way that each section represented a different approach to productivity and aesthetics in art, whether in a traditional, modern or contemporary sense. More particularly, it reveals how concepts of space, form and beauty can be ever-changing and transient. In the work alone I didn’t feel the garden theme was necessarily that apparent but what was apparent was perhaps that it was a meditation on utopia or paradise; the binding element that unfies all the participating artists is their desire to cultivate their respective visions, be it actual or metaphysical. Every piece of work represents the artists’ attempts to place themselves in a context with their environment, either through their own intervention or invention. Such acts are in essence the nature of the creative spirit and the human desire to carve out its own Eden.

What is it exactly about this Japanese aesthetic that continues to fascinate designers around the world? How does one go about explaining the manifestations of “Chado” rituals to foreign audiences?

Feel free to leave questions you would like her to answer in the comments section below or e-mail talks[at]tokyoartbeat.com. We will have him choose his favourite ones, and part of the talk will be dedicated to answering those questions.

Thank you for your support and see you July 1st!

After wandering around this space for some time, I was eventually was instructed by staff to take my shoes off and crawl into the interior space of the installation through a small circular hole. Inside, I was vaguely reminded of the sets Alejandro Jodorowsky designed for his visionary film The Holy Mountain (1973), which is submerged in pagan and spiritual iconography as it depicts one man’s spiritual search. The association became stronger as the experience became more surreal. Having spent some time staring into a circular mirror, I attempted to leave the installation, but the staff were blocking my exit. In confusion i tried again, but was told “omachi kudasai, mizu” (”please wait, water”).

Held against my will, trapped and alone in Yukinori Maeda’s installation, I anxiously waited for my water. Outside I could hear the tinker of metal cups and the whoosh of a portable burner starting up as the gas caught alight. Finally a woman in a tunic appeared through a side door, offered me a cup of purple water and said “reflect your light”. Drinking the water was easy, reflecting my light was not. I felt like I was an actor involved a historical re-enactment of the 1978 Jonestown Kool-Aid incident.

“Light Construction” is the current show taking place at the Center for Cosmic Wonder in Aoyama. During this exhibition the space is being used to invoke the “positive light within us”. This kind of new age rhetoric may seem naîve, or facile, and brings to mind badly photocopied spiritual ‘literature’ from the late sixties to early eighties, when cults and new-age sects were most fully in bloom. But on the other hand, if taken sincerely, its simplicity makes it overwhelmingly challenging. How can we even hope to accurately define and characterise something as amorphous as “the positive light within us”?

Peacefully hiding in a backstreet, the Center for Cosmic Wonder sits as a vivid monument to the notion of a ‘hidden Tokyo’. As you pass through the spotless white facade, its feels like you are entering a kind of modernist ashram. The Center for Cosmic Wonder is explained as being a medium for expressing ‘the origin of all things, the origin of us’. Currently the contents of the center include clothing (the ‘Cosmic Wonder’ and ‘Cosmic Wonder light source’ labels) and the ‘Light Construction’ exhibition. In the past this space has been filled with photography, film screenings, music ceremonies, rocks, mirrors, and other natural detritus and events.

Guiding all of this is the artist Yukinori Maeda, represented by Taka Ishii Gallery, who thematically explores the nature of light. He exhibited one of his installations at the ‘Space for your future’ shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, earlier this year. He most recently exhibited at Galerie Lafayette in Paris with other Asian artists as part of their ‘Mellow Fever’ exhibition.

The other artists who are participating in this show are not only fine artists, but come from a variety of different fields. Mike Mills is a graphic designer and film director, who directed the recent movie Thumbsucker. Elein Fleiss works as an editor, writer and photographer and was founder of the literary magazine ‘Purple Journal’ (which is currently on hiatus). Yoshimio is one of the founding members the seminal experimental music group ‘Boredoms’, and also plays in a group known as ‘OOIOO’.

The idea for this show began in 2007 when Mike Mills, Elein Fleiss and Yoshimio all wrote short texts on the nature of light for a Cosmic Wonder project in 2007. These texts took the form of personal reflections, observations and quasi-philosophical ideas concerning the more abstract implications of light. Less concerned with its physical and scientific makeup, their writings are very similar to the way the American transcendentalist Thoreau used his observations of natural phenomena as a vehicle for discussing the more philosophical and spiritual aspects of the wider world.

Elein Fleiss’ About Everyday (2008) is the first work you see as you enter the space and consists of a series of photographs shown as a slideshow projection in the dark entrance hall. It is stated that these photographs are all taken from her everyday life. However, rather than images showing the rituals and events of her daily life, the images show serene and beautiful natural scenes; such as sunlight wafting through a forest. Enigmatically, these settings are interspersed with projections of pure colour.

Mike Mills is exhibiting a set of ninety-six small paintings of colourful rainbows on thin A4 paper, titled Battles (2008). Next to this is a small and ecstatic wall painting called Fireworks (2007), based on paintings compiled into a book published earlier this year through Nieves. Mills originally painted these firework motifs as they had the effect of relieving his anxiety. Complementing these highly graphic works is a small yellow booklet titled ‘Difficult Times: Every book about spirituality I own’ (2008). Overall these works were simple, and felt rather at odds with the work on the walls.

Some have claimed that the works under the ‘Cosmic Wonder’ umbrella are vacuous. I would not entirely disagree. But I don’t think this is necessarily due to a lack of meaning, or a lack of focus. Perhaps it is because the creators are searching for something that approximates ‘nothingness’, an attempt to strip the work of vivid and concrete associations in the hope of reaching out to something closer to a sense of ‘everything’, or the infinite.

It appears that Yukinori Maeda has attempted to deify light itself. His works, and the works of the others in this show, are part of a progressive discovery and worship of that deity. But this kind of attempt to explore a pantheistic vision of all things — nature and God part of ‘one extended substance’ — is ambitious and troublesome. What interests me most about these works is the degree to which their ‘attempts’ come close to achieving something concrete in the face of such evidently amorphous aspirations. At times ‘Light Construction’ felt like a fascinating exercise in cult aesthetics. It evoked a world where doing something like painting ninety-six rainbows for one’s own therapeutic pleasure, or drinking purple water was not only seen as an artistic ritual, but as a genuine celebration of spiritual power.

The exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo focuses on the Brazilian-Japanese artist’s paintings, which have garnered him critical acclaim but also includes work ranging from miniature landscapes to cartoonish sculptures as well as a documentary about the man himself. His paintings are, in a word, fascinating. They manipulate otherwise banal urban settings, rendering them as fantastic visions that often hide social commentary behind a pastoral veil. Each work of art captures the imagination of your child-self even as it challenges your adult ego with sarcastic humor to question the societies humanity has developed.

Crow’s Nest (1996) is one I liked in particular for its rearrangement of a skyscraper construction site. Steel beams and poles strewn around the site form the twigs that make up a crow’s nest with an ominous, transparent specter of a crow dominating the frame. In the wake of the earthquake in Sichuan, China, where so many poorly made school buildings collapsed killing hundreds of students at a time, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between the fragility of a bird’s nest to our own structures.

Oiwa’s penchant for helping his audience view the fantastic in the everyday is evident also in Asian Dragon (1995) where a red boat beneath a greenish dock forms the tongue of a dragon. Black tires at the end of the dock become nostrils, a passing freight train forms the dragon’s back, and greenish buildings along the dock form the dragon’s tail. Painted while the artist resided in Tokyo, the piece gives cartoonish form to the booming economies of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. And yet, the gloomy night, the ominous dirty green and ruinous state the houses that form the dragon seems to criticize these societies for building models of economic success that do not translate into a better life for their poor.

The Hachiko series of ‘X-ray’ paintings of Shibuya’s famous dog are more playful. Five different cutout canvases reveal the dog’s mechanical insides as it shifts through different positions throughout the day while waiting for its master. Close-up paintings of various body parts reveal the screws, bolts, and bindings that make up its organs. Oiwa throws in a little humor with the ‘Shower’, which I’ll leave to your imagination.

These child-like daydreams contrast with more recent nightmares such as Greenhouse Effect (2001), in which a red-tinted urban landscape conveys the sense of the world baking in an oven. Peace & War (2001) is a two-painting series in which a peaceful, pastoral daytime scene transforms into a hellish graveyard at night. Upon moving to New York in 2002, Oiwa discovered along with the city’s shopping centers, restaurants, and theaters thronging with people, a psychological undercurrent of fear reflected in the dark background of Gardening (Manhattan) (2002). In hindsight, Oiwa appears to have been extremely sensitive to the unease pervading the world early this decade.

The exhibition also displays the draft material — collages of photographs, magazine and newspaper clippings, and sketches — that led to the creation of many of Oiwa’s paintings. What is probably most surprising is the documentary on the second floor in which we meet Oscar Oiwa himself as he works on his paintings in the various studios he has occupied. “He could be an ordinary Japanese salaryman,” commented one viewer sitting next to me. The statement speaks volumes of the stereotypes that inhabit our minds and cloud our ability to view the same world in different ways. But as soon as we feel we are blinded, an artist like Oscar Oiwa comes along to whisk those clouds away.

Working in miniature for the first time, installation artist Donna Ong from Singapore has created several small pieces that embody exactly this state of latent potential and wonder. Perched silently on black shelves are toy-like models of what seem like dollhouse furniture, fantasy kitchens and interiors in a two-tone palette of black and grey. Looking closer lets you peer into the private lives of the inhabitants missing from the diorama, but there is no clear narrative to the work. Impassive and as immaculately arranged as a finely-crafted architectural model, the installations have the feel of a showroom for the imagination, a sort of template for the projection of the viewer’s own wistful reveries of dream living arrangements – an invitation to daydream that is particularly pointed in a city that often strangles personal space, preventing the leisurely inhabitation of that space with sundry ornaments, talismans and lived-in stories.

With components culled laboriously from Tokyo’s antique and hobbyist shops, as well as its emporiums of encyclopedic Stuff (Tokyu Hands, for instance), Ong’s work calls to mind the obsessiveness of other assemblages of objects lovingly tended to in this city – cluttered coffeeshops and kissaten, shambolic nurseries of potted plants and bushes that help to green the concrete — the art of cataloging and ordering a life within a yon-jo-han (4.5 tatami mat) lot. As with the Japanese miniature art of bonsai, which condenses nature and prunes its dimensions, abolishing the garden while retaining the idea of it, Ong’s miniature interiors evoke the unrealized potential of a domestic sanctuary in Tokyo. Without the possibility of a more generously spaced abode, these installations seem to cling to a wistful ideal of an interior that defies the reality of clutter and congestion in Tokyo spaces.

Thiago Rocha Pitta, from Brazil, deals with accumulations of another kind – not of objects in space, but of time, and its mark on the environment. Despite the plastic veneer and inorganic materials that make up much of the city, there are still large swathes of the city made of wood, concrete and stone, continually weathered by operations in this wet climate. With moisture percolating through these materials, the weather leaves the skin of time behind on a surface that leads a sedimentary existence – having perhaps some visible accumulation of matter on it (moss, rust), but characterized mostly by changes in color and texture. Focusing his attention on these surfaces in the city – the “blind walls” of buildings with no windows, for instance – Rocha Pitta delineates in a series of drawings this temporal process that accumulates invisibly on the surfaces of buildings in Tokyo. With varying shades of ink on Japanese washi paper, the drawings show not contours of spatial depth, but rather phases of time whose durations are distinguished pictorially by difference in hue, and either the wash or thickness of the pigment. This notion of temporal sedimentation is materialized especially beautifully in an outcropping of salt crystals that blossom in the top left corner of one of Rocha Pitta’s framed canvases, balanced at the lower end by a the singed browning-over of a flame held to the paper. One element demonstrates the gradual sedimentation of form over time, the other a chemical reaction that erupts and expires in an instant.

Thus both Ong and Rocha Pitta present a finely nuanced, perhaps accidentally complementary exhibition that prompts a reconsideration both of interior spaces and spatial accumulation, as well as exterior spaces and temporal accumulation – a thematic that carries all the more weight in a city that is in many ways an extreme case in both respects: a surfeit of objects, all fairly recently produced and acquired, distributed within a space straining to contain them, leading to the paradox of both unruly outdoor streetscapes battling the weather, and orderly interiors that resist disintegration and chaos.

These works are very sensual: you find yourself struggling to overcome an almost overwhelming urge to run your fingers over the surface of each and every piece. A set of paintings by Hitomi Iwano provides an ideal example of this tactility. Made with both modern and traditional Japanese techniques, her beautiful, watery photographic abstractions have been printed onto cloth, and then applied to separate, sculpted styrofoam canvases using kimekomi, a technique taken from traditional Japanese doll-making. This probably provides one of the more obvious examples on how the artists in this group, though punchy and uncompromisingly modern in their approach, seem to also be able to incorporate the more subtle elements of Japanese aesthetic tradition.

Nearby Junji Shiotsu’s Hamon features an intricate pattern of white blossoms, made with completely different materials but achieving a similar effect of fluidity. The work creates a dynamic harmony with the surrounding space through the layering mirrored glass and transparent vinyl panels; its elusive monochromatic motifs shimmer in and out of sight as you move around it. Next to it, a painting by Taro Morimoto echoes the floral motifs with a novel use of bold, simple forms rendered in a thick acrylic veneer. The vivid shapes in his work are all framed by delicious thick ridges of colour, squeezed on using the same kind of piping bag used for decorating cakes. The shapes represent either flowers or, like his piece La Lumiere #7, what seems like ball light composed of polarized colours. This solidly defined pop-art style, with all its sharp but obscure shapes and ridges, seems to lurch away from the white gallery wall with confident, boundless energy.

In the space between Shiotsu and Iwano’s work, the white and blue petals of Tomoya Tsukamoto’s Underwater Forest and Puzuru shimmer in a different way. The work is given both depth and buoyancy by Tsukamoto’s combination of simple, bold chromatic colours and meticulous brushwork, creating an abstract though very tangible sensation of spatial depth. The forms seems to come from nature but their contrast with the bright, unyielding colour scheme brings a tension to the surface of the work, as though the scene threatens to burst out of its already frail frame.

These works all convey the idea of burgeoning surfactants, operating not only on an aesthetic or technical level but also on a more symbolic level, exploring the semantics of the concept of “surface”. One cannot help feeling that all these pictures, these surfaces, these layers, are in fact of both concealing and revealing a world that consists purely of masks and facades. A world that positively thrives on refined perceptions of reality. For example, Kei Imazu’s large neon-bright painting Prizes, depicts a boy floating or perhaps swimming over a fluidic and chromatic consumer paradise, a sprawling supermarket that spreads up to and beyond the edge of the canvas. He seems to be holding his breath, and his environment is abundant and enriched but also overwhelming and devoid of warmth.

Takeshi Abe has constructed a series of panels made of individually painted wooden cubes which, stacked in a grid, reveal blurred human forms. Abe’s pixelated figures conjure up a very contemporary kind of daydream, a world populated by digital ghosts, reminiscent of faceless figures that flicker on CCTV footage, fading in and out of their digital existence. Like Imazu and the others he also seems to be exploring the surfaces that define his own world, where we are all subject to the influence of society’s continuous reams of artifice and facsimile, the abyss that ripples, trickles and swells just in front of the camera lens and behind the cathode ray tube. These works are characterized by a sense of longing in the reconciliation between that which is bold, modern and industrial and that which is organic, delicate and subtle. It is in essence the surface below which the conflicted enigma of the Japanese experience resides.