Ten Shows Not to Miss During Tokyo Gendai

Japan’s art market is among the fastest growing in the Asia-Pacific, and the third edition of Tokyo Gendai—the country’s first truly international fair—arrives with programming that pairs major exhibitions with a spotlight on homegrown talent and recent Japanese art history. The fair’s director told Observer in a recent interview that the years from 2019 to 2023 marked a period of striking momentum in Japan’s market, fueled by the arrival of heavyweight international galleries. Last year, Pace and Ceysson & Bénétière opened new spaces in Azabudai Hills and Ginza, signaling both commercial ambition and a bid to court the country’s increasingly confident, younger class of collectors more attuned to international proposals. At the same time, the pandemic years ushered in a wave of new local galleries committed to mixing Japanese talent with international dialogue in fresh, inventive programs opening across the city.

Continuing its push to energize Tokyo’s art scene, Tokyo Gendai returns this week with a packed program of events, institutional tie-ups and international collaborations designed to keep global eyes on Japan. Ahead of the fair’s opening and what has become a high-stakes week of cultural happenings, we’ve compiled a list of essential shows—both commercial and institutional—that no one should miss.

“Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010”

• The National Art Center, Tokyo
• Through December 8, 2025

While many are familiar with Japan’s traditional and postwar art, or with its more recent underground and Superflat aesthetics, few surveys have examined how the country’s opening to the world in the 1980s shaped artistic expression in relation to its evolving society and identity. Deepening ties with both Tokyo’s art ecosystem and international institutions, Tokyo Gendai has partnered with the National Art Center and M+ in Hong Kong to present “Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010,” which offers a fresh perspective on the evolution of Japanese contemporary art at that pivotal historical juncture. Co-curated by the two institutions, the exhibition moves beyond the shadow of postwar trauma to trace the trajectory of Japanese art from the boom years of the 1980s and ‘90s through the pressures of globalization and cultural competition. Featuring work by more than 50 artists from Japan and abroad, the show reflects on a transitional era when new practices emerged or drew inspiration from Japan between 1989—when the Shōwa era ended and the Heisei era began—and 2010. The exhibition opens with a prologue on the first stirrings of internationalization in the 1980s before pivoting to 1989, when a surge of experimentation unfolded amid sweeping socio-political change. This cultural and identity shift is explored through three thematic lenses. “The Past Is a Phantom” considers how artists grappled with war’s lingering imprint on both society and the individual psyche. “Self and Others” interrogates identity, gender and hierarchy, revealing how Japanese culture can facilitate exchanges across differences. Finally, “A Promise of Community” highlights projects that forge new forms of relation, whether through engagement with existing communities or the invention of new ones.

Sonia Delaunay, “Everything Is Feeling”

• Pace Gallery, Tokyo
• Through October 18, 2025

After opening its new Azabudai Hills space last year with a museum-quality Calder exhibition, Pace Gallery Tokyo now turns its focus to the radiant vision of Sonia Delaunay. “Everything Is Feeling” assembles 42 works on paper from the 1920s to 1940s—studies for her fabric designs that capture the fluid synthesis of color and light she pursued across media. A polymath and Jewish émigré from present-day Ukraine, Delaunay is often linked to Guillaume Apollinaire’s term “Orphism”—a label she rejected—yet her practice remains one of its most compelling embodiments. Fueled by a lifelong exploration of color’s emotional, psychological and phenomenological force, she translated the pulse of modern life into a kinesthetic, near-musical experience of abstraction. Organized with Gió Marconi Gallery, the Tokyo show highlights her visionary interplay of color, pattern and form while placing it in dialogue with Japan’s aesthetic traditions. The result is an intimate yet resonant presentation—chromatic constellations that sketch an entire sensorial and imaginative universe at once spiritual and defiantly unclassifiable.

“Echoes Unveiled: Art by First Nations Women from Australia”

• Artizon Museum, Tokyo
• Through September 21, 2025

The Artizon Art Museum is hosting Japan’s first survey devoted to Aboriginal women artists, reflecting the global art world’s growing focus on Indigenous practices. “Echoes Unveiled: Art by First Nations Women from Australia” features works by seven independent artists and one collective, alongside work by four artists represented in the Ishibashi Foundation Collection. On view for the first time in Japan is an intergenerational lineup that includes Maree Clarke, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Julie Gough, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Noŋgirrŋa (Nonggirnga) Marawili, Yhonnie Scarce, the Tjanpi Desert Weavers and Judy Watson. The exhibition explores the enduring presence of traditional culture in Aboriginal art while highlighting how these artists engage in decolonization within contemporary Australian society. At the same time, it considers how this process intersects with global creativity, shaping a multifaceted expression of First Nations Australian art that is anchored in ancestral traditions yet alive within today’s global identity.

“CHEN Fei: Father and Child”

• Watarium Museum, Tokyo
• Through October 5, 2025

The WATARI-UM Museum is a must-visit gem in the heart of Tokyo’s buzzing Shibuya district, celebrated for its experimental programming that responds to the latest currents of contemporary expression in Japan and across the region. Founded in 1990 by Shizuko Watari as a private museum, its striking concrete-and-glass building—designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta—has become an architectural landmark in the city. Currently, the museum is presenting a solo exhibition by Beijing-based Chinese artist Chen, featuring 15 intimate paintings created between 2022 and 2025, a monumental seven-meter mural, installations and archival documents, all staged within a distinctive site-specific curatorial design. The works draw inspiration from E.O. Plauen’s iconic German comic Vater und Sohn (Father and Son), which resonated with Chen during his recent experience of becoming a father. Through this lens, the exhibition reflects on father-son dynamics, extending from familial bonds to the social and political pressures that shape both individual and collective life. Chen channels a heightened sense of responsibility and awareness of the fragility of human values and affections in the face of history’s uncertainties. His paintings imagine a precarious yet possible future in which love, intimacy and human connection can be reclaimed from the chaos of the present. With the precision of a cartoonist and the tenderness of a parent, Chen embarks on a visual exploration of affection, probing what family means in today’s fractured world.

Alex Katz, “Four Seasons”

• SCAI (Piramide), Tokyo
• Through October 18, 2025

Emerging as a singular figurative voice in countertendency to the dominant aesthetics of New York art production in the 1980s, Alex Katz became best known for his cool, flat, instantly recognizable portraits and close-ups—distillations of psychological presence and emotional expression reduced to the barest traits, where Pop aesthetics intersect with sociological inquiry. His style, which he once described as “painting in the present tense,” strips away extraneous detail to freeze a moment in time, capturing the fleeting nature of human expression that suddenly reveals the essence of a soul, resulting in images that feel both deeply personal and strikingly universal. Yet, as his sweeping Guggenheim survey underscored just a few years ago, since 2022 the American artist has shifted focus toward the transient nature of light and color, capturing atmospheric moments as they flicker and dissolve across landscapes. SCAI is showing his series “Season,” a body of work rooted in iPhone snapshots and quick sketches that Katz expands into large canvases to evoke nature’s shifting moods. These paintings are less documentation than a poetic record of perception itself and an attempt to render the mutable sensations that shape our experience of the world. Notably, by eliminating horizons and conventional perspectives in this pursuit of “quick things passing,” Katz unexpectedly aligns with traditional Japanese painting, where the value of empty space becomes a way to capture the relentless flux and transformation of our surroundings. His brushstrokes are laid with speed and immediacy, holding fleeting moments in sketches and poetic annotations like suspended snapshots. “To get involved in painting a sunset,” he explains, “you have 15 minutes to make a sketch. And then what you do is make a sketch from what you remember of this moment.” In this sense, each canvas becomes an index of sensory memory, granting ephemeral experience both spatial and emotional permanence.

“CONNECT,” a multi-gallery partnership with Art Busan

• Terrada Art Complex and Tokyo Gendai, Tokyo
• For the duration of the fair

Tokyo Gendai has teamed up with Art Busan on a collaborative project titled “CONNECT,” with the theme “Crossroads of Contemporary Art.” The initiative unfolds in two parts: a main program at the art fair and a satellite program at the Terrada Art Complex. The partnership brings nine leading Korean galleries and two Chinese galleries into the fold, extending the fair’s reach through talks, activations and a showcase. At Terrada, six participating galleries will spotlight their artists, weaving together the voices of Korean and Japanese practitioners and pushing their work into a broader regional conversation. On view in Tokyo directly from Korea are works by some of the most interesting names of the country’s scene, including Kim Hongjoo, Lee Bae, and Kim Taek Sang (Johyun Gallery); Song Burnsoo (Gallery Baton); Huh Myoung Wook (Gana Art); Moonassi and Cho Hwaran (EM Gallery); JEJn (THEO); and Yuki Saegusa (Arario Gallery).

“The Architecture of Sou Fujimoto”

• Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
• Through November 9, 2025

Tokyo Gendai week will also be the final chance to see the extensive survey the Mori Art Museum is dedicating to Sou Fujimoto’s architectural practice. This exhibition is the first comprehensive overview of the Japanese architect’s unique approach and philosophy, articulated across eight sections that trace his output over the past thirty years while spotlighting projects currently underway. As one of Japan’s most inventive voices of the 21st century, Fujimoto has consistently challenged conventional boundaries between interior and exterior, structure and environment, producing iconic buildings defined by an organic integration of nature, abstraction and human scale. His philosophy of “primitive future” looks both backward and forward—drawing from elemental shelters in nature while reimagining how architecture might adapt to dense urban societies and fragile ecologies. Fujimoto’s architecture is less about form as object than about creating porous environments that propose new modes of coexistence between people and with nature. He first gained international attention with House NA (2011) in Tokyo, a transparent, stacked glass-and-steel dwelling described as a “living tree” for urban life, where residents move between platforms like birds on branches. His memorable Serpentine Pavilion in London (2013)—a cloudlike lattice of thin white steel he called an “architectural landscape”—cemented his reputation for transforming ephemeral concepts of light, air and forest into inhabitable structures. What he created was a new kind of environment, where the natural and the man-made merge: not solely architectural, nor solely natural, but something entirely new. For Fujimoto, the fundamental question is how architecture differs from nature, and more importantly, how it might become part of nature, dissolving the line between the two. That inquiry extends into his recent works, such as the L’Arbre Blanc tower in Montpellier (2019), with balconies sprouting outward like leaves, and the House of Music Hungary in Budapest (2022), a flowing, perforated canopy that merges seamlessly with its park setting. Both push further his exploration of architecture as an organic and communal force. Looking ahead, Fujimoto has also been appointed Site Design Producer for Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan.

Mie Morimoto, “a light wind”

• Misako & Rosen, Tokyo
• Through September 14, 2025

Misako & Rosen is one of the most dynamic galleries to have established its name outside Japan and is highly active within the global community. During the fair, the gallery is presenting at its main Tokyo location a fourth solo exhibition of work by photographer Mie Morimoto. Though similar in form to Morimoto’s 2018 exhibition “Territory,” the photographs in “a light wind” mark a notable shift in her practice: shot on film with a Leica camera, versus her usual use of a medium-format camera, these new works embrace a degree of casualness yet serve as powerful statements on and documents of fleeting moments of beauty and poetry that surround us daily, often overlooked amid the city’s bustle. Installed in pairs, the images suggest a dialectic dialogue that opens up new meanings and narratives while engaging the viewer’s gaze and emotional and psychological charge. Photography here becomes a portal through which one can see the world through alternative lenses.

Bernar Venet, “Algorithm and Chance”

• Ceysson & Bénétière, Tokyo
• Through November 1, 2025

For its second exhibition at its newly opened Tokyo space, French gallery Ceysson & Bénétière is presenting a selection of previously unseen works by Bernar Venet. “Algorithm and Chance” reactivates a familiar form in Venet’s lexicon while advancing his notion of generative art—an endless process of evolution and transmutation now extended into the possibilities of the digital and virtual realm. “Subjecting these forms to the digital experience represents a new step in my ongoing effort to question everything,” Venet said in a statement. Working with programmers, the artist harnesses algorithms to generate images that are at once unpredictable and rigorously constructed. “Generative art represents a new field of experimentation for me,” Venet added. Yet this use of code coherently continues a long-standing logic in his practice. As early as the 1960s, he formulated the “principle of equivalence,” or the idea that the same content could be expressed through multiple mediums in different variations. His embrace of digital tools today extends this coherence, anchoring it firmly within new digital mediums and positioning Venet as both a witness and relentless experimenter in art’s ongoing dialogue with technology.

“Anne Truitt: Solo Exhibition”

• TARO NASU, Tokyo
• Through October 4, 2025

Leading Japanese gallery TARO NASU, which recently participated in Frieze Seoul, is presenting the first solo exhibition in Japan of American artist Anne Truitt. She is commonly recognized for her radical approach to Minimalism, though she consistently rejected the label. Her experience as a nurse during World War II shaped her practice, deeply informing a style marked by an austere, almost surgical treatment of abstract form stripped of overt emotion yet rich in psychological resonance. From the 1960s onward, she developed the geometric wooden sculptures that became her signature: hand-painted columns and forms meticulously coated with layers of acrylic in carefully chosen, luminous colors. Unlike many Minimalists who embraced industrial fabrication, Truitt insisted on the handmade, repeatedly sanding and repainting her surfaces to achieve a subtle depth and an acute physical and sensory presence. She also reflected on her artistic process in a series of journals—Daybook (1982), Turn (1986) and Prospect (1996)—that remain widely read for their candid insights into the life and discipline of an artist. Today, her work is held in major collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Hirshhorn Museum, MoMA and the Whitney, and she is regarded as a pivotal figure in expanding the language of postwar abstraction. Presenting mostly delicate works on paper, this exhibition in Tokyo seeks to deepen regional appreciation of her practice, which resonates strongly with principles of Eastern aesthetics and spirituality.