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Tuesday night in Tokyo Roppongi As the rain poured down in the city’s bustling gallery district, artists, collectors, dealers and others gathered for the opening of numerous galleries, including the local Protecting Art and Ishii Takashiand outposts of foreign blue chip companies, e.g. PerrotinThere was champagne and hors d’oeuvres, as well as frozen desserts in the Perrotin shop, located next to the main gallery on the first floor. Upstairs, Perrotin is opening a third, intimate, salon-style space.
This is called Tokyo Modern The second art fair opened on Thursday Pacific YokohamaThe convention center is located about an hour’s drive south of central Tokyo. Locals attending the opening ceremony included Magnus Renfrewis the founder of the fair and a gallery owner in London. Sadie Colesa participating dealer.
Reports from last year’s inaugural fair were generally positive, but as anyone in the art fair industry knows, the real test comes in the second edition. There are complicating factors this time around: The global art market is different than it was in 2023, work by many hot young (and flippable) artists has cooled considerably, and a stronger dollar against the yen, while good for Americans coming to Japan to shop, could be problematic for dealers selling work to locals in dollars.
Still, art fairs are a long game, and the fact that the Peroden Gallery is expanding is even more important. Pace Gallery This week, the Tokyo branch is being previewed ahead of its September opening, suggesting that things are heating up in the Japanese capital. Renfrew probably knows this better than most art fair bosses: he was the founder of the Hong Kong Art Fair from 2007 onwards and later became chairman of the board. Art Basel Hong Kong.
In 2007, there were no major galleries in Hong Kong. Gagosian In 2011, Gagosian Gallery started opening a space in Seoul, and now all the big galleries have opened there. The trend now observed is that the Asian market is no longer concentrated in Hong Kong, but is moving towards regional markets: for example, Gagosian Gallery will open a space in Seoul for the first time, coinciding with the third Seoul International Contemporary Art Fair. Frieze Art Fair A new exhibition was held there Derek Adams In the APMA Cabinet, located at AmorePacific,Depend on Art News Top 200 Collectors Xu QingpeiPace opened a permanent location in Seoul in 2017.
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Visitors enter the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan.
Photo DEA/G. SOSIO/De Agostini Image source: Getty
It’s safe to say there’s a new generation of art collectors in Japan, and as one dealer told me, they’re buying art in part because they’re inspired by entrepreneurs. Maezawa Yusaku Bought for a record $110.5 million Jean-Michel Basquiat He offered the painting at auction in 2017, when he was just 41. The dealer told me that Maezawa’s influence was mixed. “He had a big influence, and there was some negativity because he was always a speculator, but there are some decent people in Japan who collect seriously.”
There are also old-school families, such as the powerful Mori family, whose main representatives are Yoshiko Mori.5,500 square feet in Pace, Thomas Heatherwick– designed by the Tokyo gallery located in New Azabudai Hills Development project, developed by Mori Building Co., Ltd. Mori Minoru (Yoshiko’s father, who died in 2012) founded Mori Art Museum This led to the development of the Mori Art Museum’s Roppongi Hills in 2003. The Mori Art Museum opened its Azabudai branch in November and held the Olafur EliassonIn Tokyo, as elsewhere (such as New York’s Chelsea arts district), the art market is closely tied to real estate development.
Last July, when the inaugural Tokyo Contemporary Art Fair opened, it was big news that the Japanese government was revising tax laws to make it easier for galleries and fairs to operate. This year will be the measure of how that pans out. “The art market in Japan is lagging behind where logic dictates,” Renfrew told The Art Newspaper How far behind last year will be determined this year and in the years ahead.
