The show’s title “Trans-Cool Tokyo”, was taken from Cool Japan — a concept the show’s curator Yuko Hasegawa says is adapted from Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia idea.

While the term Cool Japan was aimed at promoting Japanese cultural software, in the case of the exhibition, it refers to a chunk of Japanese art development spanning 44 works by 17 Japanese artists.

The exhibition includes groundbreaking pop-art works by Yayoi Kusama, works by artists from a younger generation such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, who since the second half of the 1990s have stamped their own creative identities on global pop culture, as well as a yet younger generation born in the 1970s.

It seems, the three famed artists mentioned above have each a peculiar trait. Yayoi Kusama (born in 1929) suffered from psychoneurosis and schizophrenia from an early age, causing her to see everything covered in dots or in repetitive forms when hallucinating.

She is represented with a portrait of an eerie woman’s face covered in dots, and an installation of a boat covered with soft phalluses, a reference to Yayoi Kusuma’s feminist traits long before the term feminist was used.

Titled Walking on the Sea of Death, the boat and the oars that at first sight appear “innocent”, at closer look sprout sea creatures like tentacles, a reference to the phallus as a metaphor of male power.

Quasi-innocent childlike images combined with Japanese manga, anime and Japanese traditional techniques mark the works by Yoshitomo Nara (born in 1959) and Takashi Murakami (born in 1962), who both have made a decisive impact on Japanese pop art and beyond.

In Yoshitomo Nara’s cute little girls painted in clean direct lines and pale colors that suggest an
innocent appearance, the over-emphasis on the large slanting of eyes and the eye cornered balls appear mischievous and speak of defiance, rebellion and loneliness, said to be inspired by his childhood memories.

Eyes are also remarkable in the works by Takashi Murakami’s cute but creepy creatures, grinning faces, protruding with multiple eyes in flowers, mushrooms, or from his first Japanese Micky Mouse like character, which he called DOB.

Murakami coined the term Superflat to describe the speed of the creative process and the hyper two-dimensionality of his works.

But it seems, the generation born in the 1970s have engaged in more flexible themes. Kohel Nawa (born in 1975), for instance covers a stuffed deer with small and large crystal balls, appearing like three-dimensional pixels.

Looking into these gives a sensation of seeing a kaleidoscope of the surrounding environment.

In Data-matrix (no.1-10), Ryoji Ikeda (born in 1966) transforms everyday stimuli like sound and light into basic elements like sine waves and pixels to compose audiovisual installations and Kazuhiko Hachiya (born in 1966) in Airboard combines a skateboard and a jet engine to explore the possibility of an alternative mode of transportation.

Courtesy of Singapore Art Museum at 8Q Data-matrix (no.1-10) by Ryoji Ikeda (2006-2009). More casual is the telephone booth Kiichiro Adachi (born in 1979) transformed into a one person disco, where the dancer can be seen from outside when it is dark, but cannot see the outside himself as the entire boot is covered with mirror.

While science, information technology and design make constructive inroads into young Japanese art works, there are also those who indulge in the everyday with dream and imagination. Haruka Kojin (born in 1983) likes to look out of her studio window where reflections of trees and silhouettes of the surrounding hills onto the river are her source of inspiration.

Her intriguing hanging installation titled Reflectwo is made of colorful artificial petals joined together in a horizontal symmetry, the size of which is variable, but takes the entire breadth of the wall in this
exhibition.  

Meanwhile Kyoko Murase (born in 1963) gives us the illusion she floating in her delicate dreamscapes of vague female figures integrated in the landscape, as seen in Night Falls on Her I, II.

There is also Michihiro Shimabuku (born in 1969), whose visual narration of the tale of an octopus he has caught in Akashi is endearingly imaginative.

Played in a DVD Then I decided to give a tour of Tokyo to the octopus, it is about an octopus he took on a tour to Tokyo, including the fish market, but brings it back to Asahi and frees it into the ocean, wondering whether the octopus had enjoyed the tour and was boasting to his fellow octopi on the bottom of the ocean.

The exhibition comes with a comprehensive catalogue, and an excellent curatorial by Yuki Hasegawa, MOT’s Chief Curator. The only weakness is the lack of dimensions in the captions for the works in the catalogue.

Trans-Cool Tokyo

Until Feb. 13, 2011
Singapore Art Museum at 8Q
8 Queen Street
Singapore