Shinro Ohtake, Parasol unit foundation

While international displays of Japanese modern art are often laced with those predictable motifs of Yayoi Kusama pumpkins and Haruki Murakami’s kawaii-pop, here is a major Japanese art exhibition London with something else to offer.
Shinro Ohtake: artist biography and practice
Shinro Ohtake has dominated the Japanese art scene for over 30 years and crops up in global collections like MOMA New York and the V&A London – but surprisingly this is his first solo UK exhibition.
His practice centres on the act of collage pushed to the extreme, and with powerful conclusions. Mass media scraps become bitter comments on popular culture, while pieces of wood and metal are re-assembled into large-scale tactile projections on canvas. This exhibition includes an impressive group of collage works alongside drawings, sculptures and a film piece.
Parasol unit exhibition highlight
Head upstairs to find the jewel of the Ohtake London show: one of the celebrated “Scrap Books” which were exhibited at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Each one can run to hundreds of pages. By the time it is finished, the weight of so much encrusted material turns the book into a monumental object, which looks like it was sculpted from human memories.