Japan Pulse

A map for the Kunst Oktoberfest gallery tour

This may be Tokyo Design Week, but there are a number of interesting art events worth your time as well. Some are best seen this weekend:

1) This Saturday only is the Kunst Oktoberfest, a free bus tour of an impressive number of interesting contemporary art galleries. Simply hop on and off the buses as they snake through Chuo-ku to places like Ginza’s Gallery Koyanagi and TOKYO Gallery+B.T.A.P and Bakurocho’s CASHI and Radi-um von Roentgenwerke. The buses give you around twenty minutes at each gallery before whisking you away to the next spot.

Oh, and did I mention that there will be free COEDO beer on the bus? Here’s a review of last year’s. The map you see on the right can be found on the Japanese press release here.

2) ULTRA 002 just opened at Spiral in Omotesando. What makes this contemporary art fair unique is that is focuses on individual directors instead of the galleries they work for. Here you get to see a single person’s vision in ways other fairs can’t provide. Runs until November 3rd.

3) One of the most talked about contemporary artists in the world right now is Cao Fei. Her ongoing “RMB City” project just opened at the Shiseido Gallery in Ginza and is worth a look. The videos you see there all take place in a virtual city she created in Second Life. This even includes an interview about the project with both the artist and interviewer represented by their avatars. Read The Japan Times review here.

4) The artist Ai Wei Wei is another Chinese contemporary heavyweight whose show “According to What?” is on a global tour, and will be at the Mori Art Museum for only one more week. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. More info on Ai Wei Wei here.

Julian Opie's "Clare with Landscape"

Last week SCAI the Bathhouse opened a new showing of recent works by Julian Opie (until Nov. 14). Unlike last year’s solo exhibition at Art Tower Mito, this show focuses on portraiture work, which can be just as engaging as the  walking and dancing LED figures that many people now associate him with.

Opie collects Japanese art, both old (ukiyo-e masters Kitagawa Utamaro and Utagawa Hiroshige) and new (hand-painted anime cels). You’ll see similarly flat and vivid color schemes in these portraits, but they are far from static.  Take “Clare with Landscape” (right), for example. Depicted on a vertical LCD screen, at first glance the subject stands as regal and motionless as a Rembrandt or Rubens. But then she blinks. Her bracelet then twinkles in the light and her earring sways slightly, as if to her own pulse. The landscape behind her is alive as well, with clouds lazily crossing the sky and the sound of crows and passing cars.

Opie has also recently utilized Lenticular printing to give 18th-century portraiture styles a modern spin. Many of his subjects are larger-than-life.  Seen here, wavering slightly as you walk from one side to the other, their faces stare down on you with a depth that is both intriguing and somewhat unnerving.

SCAI the Bathhouse is a beautiful 5-10 minute walk from Nippori Station, past the Yanaka Cemetary.

Julian Opie’s site and wiki

A small interview on Youtube from the “This is Shanoza” series

'pixcell - elk #2', 2009 mixed media image © OMOTE nobutada courtesy of the Hermès Foundation

Only a few more days to see the Nawa Kohei mini-show at Maison Hermès in Ginza. If you’ve never seen Nawa’s work up close, here’s your chance. Like many people, perhaps you’ve seen his work in the art press or on shopping bags for Beams, but standing in front of it is a completely different experience.

Nawa’s “Pixcell” series is,  in part, a comment on Internet culture: When you research a topic, whether it be a country, a celebrity or, say, the elk, each Web site you find will provide its own perspective of the subject, further obscuring your view of the subject as a whole and of the other perspectives you encounter.

Now look at the image above again. That’s a real elk under there, and with every step around it,  the view through each glass bead changes in relation to the others, further obscuring what lies beneath the crystalline casing. Some of the larger beads show the fur or antlers in magnified distortion. Other beads simply reflect an inverse world of the beads that surround it.

This is only one of three pieces – and concepts – that Nawa presents in this small (and free) show at the 8th floor of the Hermès building, and it closes Wednesday, so be quick.

Nawa Kohei’s Web site

More images from Nawa’s show at Maison Hermès at Design Boom.

A performance artist uses his back as a canvas at 101TOKYO this past April

The current recession hasn’t made life easy for Tokyo’s art galleries. Spending habits of collectors are now even more difficult to predict, but the fertile art scene here continues its growth spurt, and with it comes an increasing number of art fairs, including a new photography-only fair opening this weekend. Whether Tokyo can support so many fairs is an open (and frequently asked) question, but quality work will always draw buyers. Tokyo can and should be the hub for the Asian market, and as the region bounces back economically, our fair city has been providing plenty of opportunities to peruse and purchase art.

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