Art Space Tokyo: An intimate guide to the Tokyo art world

“Absent City” Held at Gallery Within Assistant

Posted by Ashley Rawlings on Monday, June 9th 2008

Architectural unit assistant, run by Megumi Matsubara and Hiroi Ariyama, have started to hold a series of exhibitions titled “Absent City”. The first installment is being held at their studio space in Hatsudai, named “gallery within assistant” for these exhibitions.

The exhibition is presented as a memoir of Tokyo as an “absent” space that doesn’t exist. Seven portraits have been taken on the streets of Tokyo, and recordings of conversations with each of these people are being broadcast through the gallery. With the handheld radio you are given at the entrance, the soundtrack to this exhibition shifts from white noise to clarity and back again as you move towards and away from the images. In the middle of the room is a table inside of which is an elaborately constructed, abstract miniature of a city, which you are only able to peer at through a set of prisms and peepholes.

The show ends June 12 (TAB details here), but there are others planned, and as soon as news of the next one comes in, it will be announced on this blog.

For anyone in Paris, it’s worth noting that assistant are the people behind the “Galerie des Galeries” exhibition space currently installed in Galeries Lafayette.