5 Exhibitions to See in Japan This Week: Six New Paintings by Luc Tuymans, Seiran Tsuno’s “Spilling Body”
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. Luc Tuymans: Condensation (Richter Raum)
- 2. The Geidai Methods: 12 Perspectives on Art Study (The University Art Museum)
- 3. Kisshomaru Shimamura Exhibition: what matters (Leica Gallery Omotesando and Kyoto)
- 4. “Artists Discovered Through Social Media — Then, Now, and the Future” (Kaikai Kiki Gallery)
- 5. Seiran Tsuno Solo Exhibition: Spilling Body (EUKARYOTE)
1. Luc Tuymans: Condensation (Richter Raum)
Condensation: Traces of the Invisible
One of Belgium’s foremost painters, Luc Tuymans has built his paintings from images that have already passed through another medium — photography, film, print, digital media. Through canvases marked by restrained color and blurred contour, he probes the uncertainty of the image — the gap between what is depicted and what is left unpainted.
The exhibition marks the world premiere of six oil paintings made specifically for the space. Its title, Condensation, refers to the way invisible differences surface as visible traces. The works include Funnel, a small, light-like form floating at the center of a dark field; Mural Skull and Mural Kitten, based on wall paintings of a skull and a kitten; and Palestinian Wildflower, its blossoms evoking land and memory. Across these varied subjects, the show traces Tuymans’s long-standing project of translating existing images into paint. Gerhard Richter’s concurrent exhibition, 10 Drawings and 2 Collages, is on view alongside it.
Luc Tuymans: Condensation
Dates: Saturday, May 30 – Saturday, October 31 (advance reservation required)
Venue: Richter Raum (1323-1475 Karuizawa, Karuizawa-machi, Nagano)
Hours: Vary by day; check official reservation page for schedule
Closed: Irregular closures
2. The Geidai Methods: 12 Perspectives on Art Study (The University Art Museum)
The Museum as a Classroom
The first installment in a three-year series running every summer from 2026 to 2028, The Geidai Methods turns the museum into a classroom. Twelve “lectures,” each curated by a member of the current faculty of Tokyo University of the Arts, are staged as gallery displays that visitors “attend” much as they would a university course. Subjects range across art history, technique, expression, viewing, materials, and conservation, drawn from works and archival materials in the university’s own collection.
On-site, current students at the university give live reproduction demonstrations, hands-on displays invite casual participation, and a free audio guide runs on visitors’ own smartphones and earphones. Even without formal training in art, visitors can choose lectures suited to their own interests, broadening how they look at art in the process.
The Geidai Methods: 12 Perspectives on Art Study
Dates: Friday, July 24 – Wednesday, September 23
Venue: The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts, Main Building (12-8 Ueno Park, Taito-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (last admission 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (except September 21)
3. Kisshomaru Shimamura Exhibition: what matters (Leica Gallery Omotesando and Kyoto)
The Ordinary, Observed in America
Tokyo-born photographer Kisshomaru Shimamura works primarily in photography, collaborating with artists, designers, and other creators across gallery direction, curation, and brand production. He has held solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Portland, and Warsaw, and published several photo books. This exhibition brings together new work made while traveling through New York, Portland, and Los Angeles with the Leica SL3-P, the newest addition to the Leica SL System.
From conversations with friends to street corners, parks, cafés, and skateparks, the photographs capture the texture of everyday life. Shimamura set out without a fixed destination or subject, walking the streets and photographing as he encountered people along the way. The title, “what matters,” came to him after the trip, as he looked back through the photographs and found that what stayed with him was not any singular event but the time spent with people and the rhythm of daily scenes. The exhibition runs concurrently at Leica Gallery Omotesando and Leica Gallery Kyoto.
Kisshomaru Shimamura Exhibition: what matters
Dates: Friday, July 31 – Sunday, October 18
Venue: Leica Gallery Omotesando (5-16-15 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 a.m – 7 p.m.
Closed: Mondays
Concurrently on view
Dates: Saturday, August 1 – Thursday, October 1
Venue: Leica Gallery Kyoto (570-120 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto)
Hours: 11 a.m – 7 p.m.
Closed: Mondays
4. “Artists Discovered Through Social Media
— Then, Now, and the Future” (Kaikai Kiki Gallery)
Found Through the Scroll
A special group show introducing twelve artists the gallery first encountered through social media. Participants include Emi Kuraya, Utanhole, MADSAKI, Momoka Ota, Hideyasu Moto, Kuru Yumeno, Naoki Saito, Mai Kurotaki, Hideki Maekawa, YEYE, Isoo Togawa, and Alison Friend, each showing both past and current work.
The exhibition unfolds against a changing art market. Since the pandemic, platforms like Instagram have opened new paths to discovering work, selling directly, and signing with galleries, even as a wave of gallery closures has swept the industry worldwide since 2025. Framed along a timeline — the moment of first contact, the present, and the future — the show traces the relationships between artists and the gallery that began on social media, along with how each of the twelve participants' practices has evolved.
“Artists Discovered Through Social Media — Then, Now, and the Future”
Dates: Friday, August 14 – Sunday, September 13
Venue: Kaikai Kiki Gallery (Motoazabu Crest Building B1F, 2-3-30 Motoazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Closed: Sundays, Mondays, and public holidays (open September 13 to coincide with Tokyo Gendai)
5. Seiran Tsuno Solo Exhibition: Spilling Body (EUKARYOTE)
What Spills Beyond the Body
Seiran Tsuno, born in Nagano Prefecture in 1990, began in fashion design and has since built a practice around the relationship between the body and clothing, and around bodily sensation itself. After graduating from the Japanese Red Cross College of Nursing, she worked at a psychiatric hospital and at Bethel’s House in Urakawa, Hokkaido, before pursuing graduate research at Institute of Science Tokyo under the aesthetician Asa Ito. Her practice has since expanded beyond clothing into video, drawing, and writing.
On view are the dress Out of Body, In Dress, made by tracing the body’s contours in space with a 3D pen, alongside video, drawing, collage, and prints made with beeswax. By metabolizing their own fat, bees produce beeswax. In this process, Tsuno locates a plasticity — matter that once composed the body spilling past its contour and turning into something else.
Seiran Tsuno Solo Exhibition: Spilling Body
Dates: Friday, August 21 – Sunday, September 13
Venue: EUKARYOTE (3-41-3 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: Noon – 7 p.m.
Closed: Mondays and Tuesdays
