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

SEPTEMBER ARTICLE ROUND-UP

Posted by Ashley Rawlings on Monday, September 29th 2008

This month has been dominated by coverage of the Yokohama Triennale, which started on September 13 and runs until the end of November.

At ARTINFO, Lucy Birmingham explains how this year’s triennale outperforms its predecessor in 2005. In the Japan Times, James Hadfield pointed out some of the key performances to look out for. Andrew Maerkle also picks out some of the highlights but brings up the overall consensus in the Japanese art industry that the triennale is “boring”. Meanwhile, Edan Corkill interviewed the triennale’s director Tsutomu Mizusawa.

Tokyo Art Beat has commenced its coverage of the triennale with a series of photo reports on the multiple venues in Yokohama: the Shinko Pier, the Red Brick Warehouse, BankART Studio NYK, and the “Echo” exhibition being held at ZAIM, which has in turn been reviewed by the Japan Times. In connection with this exhibition, sociologist Adrian Favell gave a talk about the post-Murakami generation of Japanese contemporary artists, and he has published a PDF of the transcript in English and Japanese. Meanwhile, TAB’s first review of the triennale focusses on the video installation by Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss.

Artforum.com’s “Scene and Herd” has faithfully clocked the art world bigwigs at both the Yokohama Triennale and Takashi Murakami’s GEISAI art fair, and in a similar vein, V Magazine has produced a photo report on these two events and others taking place in China.

Back in Tokyo, Annette Messager’s retrospective is on show at the Mori Art Museum, and has been reviewed on Tokyo Art Beat here and the Japan Times here. “Trace Elements: Sprit and Memory in Japanese and Australian Photomedia” at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery has been covered on TAB both as a review and as an interview with the curator.

Other exhibition reviews include:

• Nobuko Watabiki at Megumi Ogita Gallery and Gallery Shiraishi [Japan Times]

• Masaki Ogihara at Gallery Hashimoto [Japan Times]

• “12 Architectural Visions” at the Setagaya Art Museum [Artscape]

• Alphabet Soup at 21_21 Design Sight [Artscape]

ART iT has published a feature on the growing number of art sites in and around Naoshima and the Seto Inland Sea, and an interview with Roni Horn, following her recent solo exhibition “This is me, this is you” at Rat Hole Gallery. In his Realtokyo column, ART iT editor Tetsuya Ozaki has commented on the Art Taipei fair.

For those of you who still haven’t bought Art Space Tokyo and are interested in a further peek inside, my interview with Atsuko Koyanagi has been published as an extract on Saatchi Online.

In other news, distributor Yohan’s bankruptcy has left Tokyo starved of foreign magazines, including art magazines — the Japan Times looks at how stores are coping.

Lastly, following part one and part two of their Omotesando architecture walk in March, the irrepressible cultural omnivores at PingMag have documented the glassy glitz of Ginza. They conclude the month with an interview with Hajime Ichikawa, a self-titled “map evangelist” who explores every possible facet of Tokyo’s topography.