"Vampire" (2025) by Monoko Hanamisaki (private collection)In numbers of eyeballs on artworks Tokyo is the undisputed art capital of the world. One possible reason for this may be our atrociously hot n' humid summers, as art galleries and museums are required by insurers to maintain conditions that are also survivable by human beings. So, not everybody going to an exhibition is going there for the art. Whatever your reasons for going, however, here is Tokyo Metropolis's picks for the best shows (and air-conditioning systems) to visit this July & August.
This Summer we are recommending cool ceramics, icy explorations, frosty Post-modernism, sub-zero photography, and chilling hyperrealism.
Lucie Rie, White Glazed Bowl Decorated with Pink Line, c. 1984, Iuchi Collection, deposited at the National Crafts Museum. Photo: Nomura Tomoya
Installation view
Installation view, photo: Yuya Furukawa
Yutaka Aoki, Untitled (1982), acrylic, spray paint, aluminium paint on canvas mounted on panel
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bay of Sagami, Enoura, 2025 © Hiroshi Sugimoto / Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi
"Mass" (2016-2017) Synthetic polymer paint on fiberglass, installation view: Ron Mueck, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2025, photo: Nam Kiyong
This Summer we are recommending cool ceramics, icy explorations, frosty Post-modernism, sub-zero photography, and chilling hyperrealism.
Lucie Rie, White Glazed Bowl Decorated with Pink Line, c. 1984, Iuchi Collection, deposited at the National Crafts Museum. Photo: Nomura TomoyaLUCIE RIE:
ELEGANT VESSELS FUSING EAST & WEST
ELEGANT VESSELS FUSING EAST & WEST
Staying cool is looking cool, and nothing in Tokyo looks cooler than the TOKYO METROPOLITAN TEIEN ART MUSEUM. From the Art Deco design of its main building to the minimalist modernism of its Hiroshi-Sugimoto-designed Annex, it has a pleasantly "chilling" effect. Also a decent AC system! This makes it an ideal venue to escape the heat, sweat, and cries of the cicadas outside. The present exhibition, ceramics by Dame Lucie Rie (1902-1995), an Austrian-British potter, is also totally cool. Rie melded a Central European sophistication with a Zen-like sense to craft disarmingly simple and beautiful works that quietly but powerfully resonate, especially in the stylish spaces of the Teien. This retrospective marks the first large-scale exhibition of her work in Japan in nearly ten years. Image: Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.
Installation viewANTARCTICA
The annual battle with the Japanese Summer sometimes means "fighting dirty," which is exactly what Tokyo's MIRAIKAN (or The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation) is doing with its "Antarctica: 70th Anniversary of Antarctic Observation!!" Accordingly, the Museum has dug up some long-forgotten Antarctic exhibition from (checks notes) 1956 and used this as an excuse to pull out all the stops and create a lot of (literally) cool ice-snow-and-penguin themed exhibits and "visitor experiences." These include what looks like an immersive video and wind tunnel installation that lets you experience an Antarctic blizzard. Meanwhile outside in Odaiba people's faces will be melting off. There are also cool aurora Australis and meteorite exhibits, and a hands-on real Antarctic ice experience, making this the coolest show in town, hands down!
Now – 27th September
PRICE: ¥2000
Installation view, photo: Yuya FurukawaETTORE SOTTSASS:
DESIGN BEGINS WHERE MAGIC BEGINS
DESIGN BEGINS WHERE MAGIC BEGINS
One of the best "oases of cool" in our globally-warmed metropolis is undoubtedly the ARTIZON. Even better, they have an exhibition that, I guess, is only going to attract around 10% of the audience of their previous show, the rather crowded Monet show. That said, this is pretty interesting show also, focusing on one of the giants of Post-Modernist design. While Post-Modernism is generally loathed in the West, many Japanese continue to love it (possibly because of the part it plays in love hotel and pachinko parlour design!). But the style, in which Sottsass was a prime mover, also represents true aesthetic freedom and a "licence to be radical," something that has a raw appeal in otherwise regimented societies. After building his reputation as a good "modernist" designer (the iconic Olivetti typewriter), Sottsass's later work was a rejection of rationalism and a passionate embrace of the primitive, playful, and symbolic -- a true "revolt against the modern world"!
Now – 4th Oct
PRICE: ¥1,200
Yutaka Aoki, Untitled (1982), acrylic, spray paint, aluminium paint on canvas mounted on panelYUTAKA AOKI: KNOTS AND PEBBLES
More abstract art! This time from the totally free KOSAKU KANECHIKA GALLERY in the Toda Building. The gallery's latest show is dedicated to 40-year-old Kumamoto-born artist Yutaka Aoki whose work oscillates between the visual and the tactile with aesthetically potent canvases built up with paint drips, peeling, stretching, and underlying layers that focuses on the point where beams of light interact with particles of mass. Larger works (150 X 150 cm) sell in the US$10,000–US$15,000 range and are probably an excellent investment.
Now – 25th Jul
PRICE: FREE
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bay of Sagami, Enoura, 2025 © Hiroshi Sugimoto / Courtesy of Gallery KoyanagiHIROSHI SUGIMOTO: EXTINCTION
The general public best know of Sugimoto's cool, silver gelatine photographic art from U2's 2009 album cover, "No Line on the Horizon," which featured one of his prints. However, the NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, TOKYO clearly believes he is bigger than the Irish arena rockers, as they are putting on a career-spanning retrospective designed to enshrine his name in the art pantheon. Drawing on 13 of Sugimoto’s photographic series, the show reveals the artist's restless exploration of the photographic medium. Expect to see his well-known Dioramas, Seascapes and Theatres, as well as more daring work: at one point in his career the radical lensman even attempted to take photos without a lens, exposing sheets of film to blasts of electricity that were conducted and refracted through basins of salty water in a darkened room. The coolness of his silver medium clearly hides a restless and raging spirit.
Now - 13th Sep
Now - 13th Sep
PRICE: ¥2,300.
"Mass" (2016-2017) Synthetic polymer paint on fiberglass, installation view: Ron Mueck, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2025, photo: Nam KiyongRON MUECK
One of the sure-fire ways to have artistic impact is to "GO BIG." Few artists have made more of this clever ploy than Ron Mueck, the 68-year-old Australian artist based in the UK, who is now the subject of a major show at Roppongi's MORI ART MUSEUM. What makes Mueck worthwhile as an artist, however, is that he uses this "giantist" technique to focus, in a hyper-realistic and ironically microscopic manner, on the human condition. The exhibition presents eleven works that dot the artist’s trajectory from early masterpieces to more recent works, including the "Mass" (2016-2017), a work which has obvious affinities with Japanese Buddhist and yokai art.
N0w – 23rd Sep
PRICE: ¥2300
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