5 Exhibitions to See in Japan This Week: A Da Vinci Painting Returns After 52 Years, Ann Veronica Janssens Makes Her Japan Debut
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. CERTAINLY TOKYO (Path Omotesando)
- 2. Silke Otto-Knapp (Taka Ishii Gallery Kyobashi)
- 3. Nigel Cooke: Night Ruins (Pace Tokyo)
- 4. Masterpieces of the Renaissance from the Musée du Louvre (The National Art Center, Tokyo)
- 5. “5 Chome 4-1 Ginza, Tokyo” by Ann Veronica Janssens (Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum)
1. CERTAINLY TOKYO (Path Omotesando)
Exploring Uncertainty
Hong Kong–based Serakai Studio brings its group exhibition CERTAINLY TOKYO to Path Omotesando in Tokyo, staged as the second chapter of CERTAINLY, which debuted at the Hong Kong salon GOLD in March 2026. The show takes its cue from La Monte Young’s 1960 work Composition 1960 #10, whose single-line instruction — “draw a straight line and follow it” — opens onto the uncertainty and unpredictability that surface between control and freedom, plan and improvisation.
The show brings together eight artists and collectives — Pak Sheung Chuen, South Ho Siu Nam, Lousy, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Santiago Sierra, Shinro Ohtake, Peter Robinson, and Weng Io Wong — working across video, installation, and performance. Straying from prediction and control becomes their creative spur, and they test the possibilities that uncertainty yields.
CERTAINLY TOKYO
Dates: Sunday, July 5 – Sunday, November 8
Venue: Path Omotesando (5-6-5 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 3–6 p.m.
Closed: Mondays through Thursdays
2. Silke Otto-Knapp (Taka Ishii Gallery Kyobashi)
Where Figure and Ground Change Places
Taka Ishii Gallery presents its fourth solo exhibition of Silke Otto-Knapp (1970–2022) for the first time since the artist’s death. Born in Osnabrück, Germany, Otto-Knapp studied cultural studies before earning her MFA at the University of the Arts London. Working with performance and the body as recurring subjects, she built up watercolor and gouache on canvas in layers, then stripped the pigment away again with water, cloth, or sponge.
On view are eight works made between 2006 and 2019, led by her signature Moontrail (Trio A) (2010) alongside later landscapes such as Rainbow (2019) and Birds and Waves (2019). Moontrail (Trio A) draws its title from Trio A, the landmark 1966 choreography by Yvonne Rainer, folding moonlight and choreographed movement into a single painted surface. In the later, empty landscapes, figure (positive) and ground (negative) are perpetually on the verge of changing places, and the contours of bodies and terrain alike emerge from a process built in equal measure on painting and erasing.
Silke Otto-Knapp
Dates: Saturday, August 1 – Saturday, September 19
Venue: Taka Ishii Gallery Kyobashi (TODA BUILDING 3F, 1-7-1 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 a.m.–7 p.m.
Closed: Sundays, Mondays, and public holidays
3. Nigel Cooke: Night Ruins (Pace Tokyo)
Paintings Born of Venetian Light
Born in Manchester in 1973, British artist Nigel Cooke has tested the possibilities of figurative painting since the late 1990s, folding into his work an abiding interest in paleontology, neuroscience, classical mythology, and zoology. The show centers on new paintings made this past spring during his residency at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice — the foundation’s first-ever artist residency — and shown as part of Bad Habits, presented on the occasion of the 61st Venice Biennale.
The Venice paintings carry the imprint of the city’s lagoon, canals, and distinctive light, along with the history and culture of the palazzo itself. The paintings unfold across night scenes like plazas and landing stages, where fragments of figures and animals mingle with stone pedestals. Alongside the works shown in Venice, the exhibition also presents the Sea Mirror series, made with seawater on the Spanish island of Formentera.
Nigel Cooke: Night Ruins
Dates: Friday, August 28 – Saturday, October 10
Venue: Pace Tokyo (Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza A, 1F, 5-8-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 a.m.–8 p.m. (appointment only after 7 p.m.; after 6 p.m. on Sundays)
Closed: Mondays
4. Masterpieces of the Renaissance from the Musée du Louvre (The National Art Center, Tokyo)
Tracing the Renaissance, with La Belle Ferronnière’s Japan Debut
The National Art Center, Tokyo presents a major survey of Renaissance art from the collection of the Musée du Louvre, tracing the movement’s many facets across fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe through more than fifty paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative objects. Chief among them is Leonardo da Vinci’s Portrait of a Woman, incorrectly known as La Belle Ferronnière, on view in Japan for the first time. It is also the first da Vinci to travel from the Louvre to Japan since the Mona Lisa in 1974.
The exhibition unfolds across four sections — Travel, Technical Innovations and Refinements, Interest in Antiquity, and The Flourishing of Portraiture — bringing together works by da Vinci alongside Botticelli, Titian, Dürer, Cranach, and El Greco. Woodcuts, engravings, bronze sculpture, medals, ceramics, and tapestries round out the paintings, tracing the full range of techniques that defined Renaissance art-making.
Masterpieces of the Renaissance from the Musée du Louvre
Dates: Wednesday, September 9 – Sunday, December 13
Venue: The National Art Center, Tokyo, Special Exhibition Gallery 1E (7-22-2 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; last admission 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Tuesdays (except September 22, November 3, and December 8), and November 4
5. “5 Chome 4-1 Ginza, Tokyo” by Ann Veronica Janssens (Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum)
5min, loop. Photo: Florian Hölzherr
Courtesy of CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
A Space Risen from Light, Sound, and Air
The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès presents the first solo exhibition in Japan of Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens. Born in Folkestone, England, in 1956 and based in Brussels, Janssens began working with plywood, glass, and concrete in the late 1970s, before turning in the 1990s to installations built from harder-to-grasp elements — light, sound, artificial fog. Her practice crosses sculpture, video, photography, and stage design, and includes collaborations with choreographers.
On view are just over ten works, spanning her practice since the 1990s alongside new work whose title borrows the venue’s own address, 5 Chome 4-1 Ginza. Among them are Rose, which treats diffused light as a material; Untitled (Blue Glitter), made with blue glitter; Swings, whose seats are covered in heat-reactive film; and the new Donut, built from the artist's own voice. Working with light, sound, air, and time — elements without fixed form — Janssens's works unsettle the viewer’s bodily sensation and destabilize the way space and objects are perceived.
“5 Chome 4-1 Ginza, Tokyo” by Ann Veronica Janssens
Dates: Friday, September 11 – Monday, January 11, 2027
Venue: Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum, 8F & 9F (5-4-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 a.m.–7 p.m. (last admission 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Wednesdays, New Year holidays (follows Ginza Maison Hermès store hours)
