The second VIP preview of the Tokyo Contemporary Art Exhibition just kicked off on Thursday. Art News Top 200 collector Takeo Obayashi admired a striking tiger painting by Robert Longo at Pace Gallery’s booth, and collector couple Shunji and Asako Oketa wandered through Blum’s booth. They weren’t the only collectors on hand. Also visiting were Yoshiko Mori, president of Mori Art Museum, Jenny Wang, head of Fosun Foundation, Simian Wang, founder of Simian Foundation, and many others. In other words, the fair opened on a high note. The extent to which this translated into sales is best measured by the following metrics: Art NewsA report will be published tomorrow, as the show continues through Sunday. In the meantime, here’s a roundup of some of the booths that particularly stood out.
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Ishii Takashi
Photo credit: Sarah Douglas/ARTnews
The exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo breaks all the rules of exhibition design and is breathtaking. Works on paper by 15 of the gallery’s artists are arranged in a straight line on three walls of the space, with frames right next to each other. With no space in between, you might expect the works to blur together, but in fact, each piece stands out and contrasts perfectly with the works around it. The arrangement ends with a small patch of negative space, where there is one piece without a frame: a piece of white paper on which Mario García Torres, who is currently exhibiting at the gallery’s Tokyo space, has left his handprints with printer toner, so that it looks as if he is holding the paper. The whole arrangement looks so perfect that it wouldn’t be surprising if some enlightened collector decided to buy the whole thing and place it above an undecorated bed in their bedroom. If I had to pick my favorite, it would have to be those delicate petal paintings by Tomoo Gokita, but I hesitate. Like people you only meet in a group, it’s hard to tell what they look like when they’re alone.
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Shiro Tsujimura at the Imura Museum of Art
Photo credit: Sarah Douglas/ARTnews
Presentation also played a big role at the booth of the Imura Art Museum in Kyoto. The focal point of the booth was the ceramics of Shiro Tsujimura, an octogenarian Japanese artist who trained at a Zen temple before turning to ceramics. The booth was filled with tall pedestals on which Tsujimura’s tea bowls were placed so closely together that there was no room to walk between them, so a crowd of admirers gathered at the front of the space as if they were seeing a celebrity. The vessels were certainly worth a look: each was carefully outlined in beige with rust accents. In one corner of the booth was a group of other ceramic vessels that looked like they had started out as vases and then spun on a wheel, swelling into spheres. Together, these large green spherical objects—each about the size of a beach ball—looked like a pile of moss. Everything about this booth was pleasing to the eye, and it’s worth noting that ceramics were selling like hot cakes.
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Danful Yang at Tottenham Gallery
Photo credit: Sarah Douglas/ARTnews
I have a soft spot for so-called trompe l’oeil materials (artwork that looks like it’s made of one material but is actually made of another). I was so fascinated by a series of works by the Chinese artist Yang Danfu on display at the Spurs Gallery in Beijing that I couldn’t tell you about the rest of the booth. Collectively called “Gently Packaged,” the works are wall-mounted sculptures, none much larger than a football, that look like the average package you receive, with the address scribbled on the shipping note and a host of other labels affixed to it. But instead of being made of cardboard, they’re hand-embroidered onto canvas. You can’t see these unless you get really close, and they might seem gimmicky, or too precious. But they’re not, and the contrast between the artist’s careful carving of each piece and the carelessness with which such packages are usually handled is compelling: tossed on trucks, on the mailroom floor, on doorsteps. Imagine displaying one of these on a table in your entryway: no one will ever come in without a smile again.
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Yusake Asai from Anomaly
Photo credit: Sarah Douglas/ARTnews
If from a distance, Japanese 40-something artist Yusuke Asai’s solo show at Shinkawa Anomaly Gallery looks drab—just earthy swirls of color—that’s because the works are made mostly of dirt. Soil, to be more precise, along with other unusual materials like coffee mixed into the paint. The closer you get to his paintings, the more you can appreciate their complexity—and their beauty. In these dazzling compositions there are figures, flowers, footprints, animals. If you went to the Yokohama Museum of Art for the show’s after-preview party, you’d know that Asai is having a very favorable moment: a huge painting is on display there, which the museum recently acquired. Asai created the painting, titled To the Forest of All Things With the help of volunteers, Asai collects soil from all over Yokohama. He has recently held solo exhibitions at various museums in Japan, and one at the Rice University Art Museum in Houston, Texas, 10 years ago. However, Asai’s ceramics are more appealing to viewers than his paintings. In the booth is a huge ceramic shaped like a fox that emerges from a container. Surrounding it are a number of small animals, none taller than a playing card, all with their eyes wide open, forever surprised by something.
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Kaikai Kiki’s TENGAone
Photo credit: Sarah Douglas/ARTnews
John Baldessari once said that, for an artist, attending an art fair and seeing their work being traded is like seeing their parents having sex. Perhaps one way to avoid the discomfort that comes with such a raw spectacle is to stay busy. That seems to be the approach of Tokyo street artist TENGAone, who completed a painting right in front of fairgoers at the Kaikai Kiki booth. Whatever you think of his work – a painting of a droopy-eared anime-style creature – there’s a lot to be said for the idea of allowing potential collectors to observe an artist at work. It taps into the fetish of the studio, romanticizing the notion of the starving artist toiling away in a loft. TENGAone, who has been creating graffiti since the age of 14, is immune to all of this and seems comfortable working in public – and, unsurprisingly for an artist who has collaborated with Takashi Murakami, seems comfortable with the commercial side of things, too.
