Tsuneyoshi Nakamura – 引き分ケ／社若

One of the great bonuses of living in a huge city like Tokyo is that there is always so much going on in terms of art and performances. Most of the major shopping and office buildings in central Tokyo use art as a way to attract more people and bring life to the otherwise rather sterile large skyscrapers of glass and steel. Last summer I saw these fantastic wooden statues at Marunouchi Building, by Tsuneyoshi Nakamura (中村恒克). They are called Hikiwake and Kakitsubata. Japanese sculptors have this amazing talent for carving wonderful works of art from wood! I think the future of modern art will be much more interesting for Japanese art-lovers. Up until now Japanese modern art have been largely ignored by the mainstream art critics around the world, but if even a mere fraction of all the talent we see coming out of Japan’s many excellent art universities make it big, it would be a fantastic boom for Japanese art! I think Mr Nakamura will be one of the successful ones.