China may have been the biggest art-world story of the past decade, but the real cognoscenti have always known that the region’s most consistently inventive work was coming out of Japan. On September 21, Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum opens the fourth edition of its rainmaking trien­nial exhibition of Japanese contemporary art, “Roppongi Crossing.” We asked two of the curators to tell us who the country’s next great art stars will be (81-3-5777-8600; through January 3, 2014).

Teppei Kaneuji,_ Teenage Fan Club #42_, 2011

The Painter

“Masaya Chiba creates intricate sculptural tableaux using everyday items and paintings he’s working on, and then makes wholly new paintings of them: He’ll take a doll and place it in front of a landscape painting, so the result looks as if the sculpture is actually in the landscape. It’s almost photorealistic.” –Gabriel Ritter, assistant curator, Dallas Museum of Art

The Sculptor

“**Teppei Kaneuji’**s most iconic works consist of grouping found objects together into structures and then covering everything with white resin. Recently, he’s also been constructing boxes out of clear plastic bags: It’s a kind of play on the minimalist art object.” –Reuben Keehan, curator of Asian contemporary art at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art

Photographs, from top: Courtesy ShugoArts, Masaya Chiba, Peaceful Village, 2010, oil on canvas, 200 x 260 cm.; Courtesy ShugoArts, Teppei Kaneuji, Teenage Fan Club #42, 2011, plastic figures with hot glue, 35.5 x 22 x 13.4 cm