5 Exhibitions to See In Japan This Week: Ettore Sottsass’s Major Retrospective, SIDE CORE and Six Other Artists Explore “Escape Route”
From major museum shows to gallery highlights, ARTnews JAPAN editors select the must-see exhibitions now on view across Japan. This article is also available in Japanese.
- 1. Mako Idemitsu: What a Woman Made (Tokyo Photographic Art Mmuseum)
- 2. Ettore Sottsass: Design begins where magic begins (Artizon Museum)
- 3. William Monk: Noon Day Night (Pace)
- 4. Masaharu Sato “REAL≒UNREAL” (art cruise gallery by Baycrew’s)
- 5. The Secret Pass Exhibition: Passing, Creating, and Being Together—Circuits for Living (Arts Maebashi)
1. Mako Idemitsu: What a Woman Made (Tokyo Photographic Art Mmuseum)
Tracing Mako Idemitsu Across 45 Works
A large-scale retrospective of Mako Idemitsu, a pioneer of experimental film and video art in Japan, is currently on view at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP). After moving to the United States in the 1960s, Idemitsu took her everyday life as a wife and mother for inspiration, probing questions about women’s lives, family, and the relationship between media and society ever since. Working in video—then still a new medium—she trained a sharp eye on the politics of domesticity and gender, producing a body of work that holds a central place in the history of moving-image art in Japan. In recent years, amid growing international debate around feminism and the body, her practice has drawn renewed attention.
Centered on the film, video, and installation works TOP acquired between 2016 and 2017, the exhibition brings together 45 works, including several on view for the first time since entering the collection. The show surveys more than half a century of Idemitsu’s career, from her early experimental films through the landmark works of the 1970s and after. The show’s title is drawn from the work of the same name, What a Woman Made (1973), which cemented her reputation. Moving between Japan and the United States, the exhibition traces her full trajectory, from those first experiments in film to the installations of her later years, charting the new ground she opened in the language of the moving image.
Idemitsu Mako: What a Woman Made
Dates: June 18 (Thursday) – September 21 (Monday, national holiday), 2026
Venue: Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (1-13-3 Mita, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, inside Yebisu Garden Place)
Hours: 10 am–6 pm (until 8 pm Thursdays and Fridays; until 9 pm Thursdays and Fridays, August 6–28); last entry 30 minutes before closing
Closed: Mondays (the following day when Monday falls on a national holiday)
2. Ettore Sottsass: Design begins where magic begins (Artizon Museum)
Where Sottsass’s Design Began
For the first time in Japan, a large-scale retrospective of Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) is currently being held at the Artizon Museum. One of the defining figures of twentieth-century Italian design, Sottsass expanded the possibilities of design beyond function and rationality to embrace emotion and playfulness. The exhibition traces his career from his product designs for Olivetti, through the activities of Memphis, the design collective he formed in the 1980s, to his final year
On view are 112 works by Sottsass from the Ishibashi Foundation collection, alongside five works by related artists and 25 archival materials. Spanning furniture, ceramics, glass, drawings, and photography, the exhibition sheds light on the thinking of a designer who spent his career pursuing a single question: What is design? The museum is also showing “Shuzo Takiguchi: Writing and Drawing” concurrently.
Ettore Sottsass: Design begins where magic begins
Dates: June 23 (Tuesday) – October 4 (Sunday), 2026
Venue: Artizon Museum (1-7-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 10 am–6 pm (until 8 pm on Fridays); last entry 30 minutes before closing
Closed: Mondays, except July 20 and September 21; also closed July 21 and September 24
3. William Monk: Noon Day Night (Pace)
Adrift Between Reality and Illusion
A New York based artist who layers imagery drawn from classic cinema, psychedelic rock, and his own memories and dreams, William Monk paints semi-abstract landscapes poised between reality and illusion. In recent years, his work has drawn international attention through solo exhibitions at museums across Asia, including in Shanghai and Nanjing.
The exhibition centers on new and recent works painted between 2021 and 2026 in London and New York. Its title, “Noon Day Night”, refers to the meteorological phenomenon in which a total solar eclipse or volcanic ash can suddenly plunge daytime into darkness—an apt symbol for the ambiguous sense of time that runs through the work. Recurring motifs—colorful pillars, rings of smoke, and a figure known as the “sentinel”—conjure a world distinctly Monk’s own, one that unsettles the boundary between landscape and psychological space.
William Monk: Noon Day Night
Dates: June 30 (Tuesday) – August 16 (Sunday), 2026
Venue: Pace Tokyo (5-8-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza A, 1F–2F)
Hours: 11 am–8 pm (Tue–Sat: 7–8 pm by appointment only; Sun: 6–8 pm by appointment only)
Closed: Mondays
4. Masaharu Sato “REAL≒UNREAL” (art cruise gallery by Baycrew’s)
Where the Everyday Begins to Waver
Moving between video and painting, Masaharu Sato (1973–2019) forged a distinctive practice. Using rotoscoping, a technique that traces video footage frame by frame and redraws the subject by hand, Sato transformed ordinary scenes of street corners, residential neighborhoods, and interiors into moving images and paintings tinged with a quiet sense of unease.
The exhibition traces the evolution of Sato’s practice over two decades, from early works made during his time in Germany to those of his final years, spanning both moving-image and two-dimensional pieces. Rotoscoping lends every work an ambiguity that resists classification as either real or imagined. Through them, Sato poses a simple question: is what appears before us truly there?
Masaharu Sato“REAL≒UNREAL”
Dates: July 1 (Wednesday) – August 23 (Sunday), 2026
Venue: art cruise gallery by Baycrew’s (3F, Toranomon Hills Station Tower, 2-6-3 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 am–8 pm; last entry 30 minutes before closing
Closed: July 13 and 14
5. The Secret Pass Exhibition: Passing, Creating, and Being Together—Circuits for Living (Arts Maebashi)
A Slight Shift in How We See the World
At a moment when social stagnation and anxiety about the future feel pervasive, this group exhibition explores new ways of engaging with reality through the lens of nukemichi (escape route, loophole). Rather than an escape from reality, nukemichi describes a practice of looking again at one’s immediate surroundings and relationships with others—shifting the frame just slightly to open up new possibilities. Seven artists working across architecture, fashion, design, street culture, and contemporary art each offer their own point of contact with society.
The participating artists are SIDE CORE, dot architects, Yurika Kono, Mai Sakamoto Nielsen, Kota Abe, Tézzo Suzuki, and the duo Arata Mino and Suguru Yamamoto. Through a range of practices, they reconsider the city, public space, and our relationships with others. During the run of the show, dot architects will lead a participatory workshop series, Archi-Gym Maebashi Edition, developing hands-on projects alongside local craftspeople.
The Secret Pass Exhibition: Passing, Creating, and Being Together—Circuits for Living
Dates: July 4 (Saturday) – August 30 (Sunday), 2026
Venue: Arts Maebashi (5-1-16 Chiyoda-machi, Maebashi, Gunma)
Hours: 10 am–6 pm; last entry 30 minutes before closing
Closed: Wednesdays
