MeeNa Park at the Kukje (Seoul)

BK0, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 160 cm. Photographer: Sangtae Kim, photo courtesy: artist, Kukje Gallery.

My review of MeeNa Park's recent work has just been posted on the Artforum Critics' Picks. This RISD graduate is having her first solo show at the Kukje Gallery in Seoul.

3331 ARTS CYD

The inaugural exhibitions in 3331 Arts Chiyoda complex proved to be as exciting as I have anticipated. The renovated space of the former school had just enough of the old spirit to make the venue not seem white cube commercial, yet, the remodeling of the classrooms-come-galleries was to a high standard—in the fully finished spaces (some are still under construction, others have not been tackled) even the doors were tagged with exhibitors' names in the way a nice gallery would do done it. The works on view varied in size and approach with a good range of media and expected viewer participation—the "Look if you like, but you will have to leap" was more than a vain threat.

Hopefully, 3331 will continue to thrive as an exhibition venue to showcase the young talent, and, starting in September, as a hub of training "those wording towards a professional engagement in the arts"—this program will start with a short tester course in May.

Please consult the 3331 Arts Chiyoda page for more information about this intitiative.

Roppongi Crossing 2010

This year's Roppongi Crossing exhibition poses a mega-rhetorical question: "Can There Be Art?" We know the answer, of course, but for the sake of doing a convincing lineup of the new talent, the Mori Art Museum built the show around the theme of street-generated art using the works works of young Japanese artists. Similarly to the VOCA exhibition, the Roppongi Crossing participants were chosen by a team of contemporary art professionals, in this case three Mori curators. But unlike VOCA that limited itself to the two-dimensional works, the Mori show offers a variety of different media. The exhibition will culminate in the allocation of the "People's Prize" which will be announced on June 13. If you visit the exhibition by June 8th you will have a chance to put your vote in the ballot box. I copy below the list of artist whose work will be on view from March 20 through July 4. Do not miss Artists' Talks on March 20th and June 5th (both 14:00 to 16:00) and check the "Public Programs" page for performance times.

Aikawa Masaru Amemiya Yosuke Aoyama Satoru Chim↑Pom contact Gonzo Dumb Type HITOTZUKI (Kami + Sasu) Kato Tsubasa Koganezawa Takehito Morimura Yasumasa

Rogues' Gallery Shiga Lieko Suzuki Hiraku Takamine Tadasu Teruya Yuken UJINO Yahata Aki Yokomizo Shizuka Yoneda Tomoko

VOCA 2010: The Vision of Contemporary Art

Beginning in 1994, a group of Japanese curators and art critics put together an annual exhibition of about three dozen young emerging artists whom they want to spotlight. The exhibition, now hosted by the Ueno Royal Museum, is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue where these curators and critics introduce their nominees in short essays. Because the participants must be selected from among many whom the nominator believes to have a particular promise this exhibition is very selective: after all, each of the people who endorse have to put their art-critical weight behind just one contemporary artist. This year's VOCA opens February 14 and will run through the end of the month. The webpage for the event appears to be in Japanese only, so you might want to note the address of the venue (Ueno Royal Museum): 1-2 Ueno Park, Taito-ku.

Wonder Seeds 2010: Katsuhiro Maeda

untitled (無題)

2009　

230mm×230mm

アクリル・顔料インク・紙

Copyright (c) Katsuhiro Maeda All rights reserved.

Amongst the one hundred budding artists, showcased in this year's Wonder Seeds exhibition held at the TWS in Shibuya, there are several whose works could grace the walls of Tokyo's better galleries. More or less arbitrarily, I would like to comment here on two of them. The first is a graduate of the Tama Art University Katsuhiro Maeda (class of 2002). The painting on display at the Wonder Site (each participant was represented by a single entry), was a non-objective composition in which small colorful shapes outlined in black were floating above the gilded Nihonga background. Because the wooden panel that served as the support was not varnished, the combination of these matte shapes with organically reflective gilding was highly contrasting and, at the same time, complimentary. Maeda found a very successful way of combining traditional Japanese art with contemporary investigations of space and color: neither upsets the internal balance of its counterpart, both are indispensable for the final work.

The second young artist is Hiroko Sasaki, I will do a separate post about her shortly.

The sale of the works from the show is conducted by the Gallery Tagboat.

Clear Your Calendars for Sunday, March 14

On Sunday, March 14 Tokyo will add another contemporary art initiative—3331 Arts Chiyoda, to the very happening network that goes under the umbrella name of Tokyo Wonder Site. The new three-story art center will open in a renovated high school building in Akihabara, and will incorporate a variety of spaces, labs and galleries housed in the former classrooms. There is not much on the Arts Chiyoda website in their statement of purpose section (although the initiative name explanation is a gem), but a close look at the schedule page is very promising. The center's inaugural exhibition "Look if you like, but you will have to leap," consists of six separate projects whose shared goal is to engage the viewers, and to promote artistic collaboration that straddles the making/looking divide. For all the utopianism of3331 descriptions their featured exhibitions look fresh and exciting. I am certainly looking forward to going!

ARTFORUM review of Tamotsu Ikeya

My review of Tamotsu Ikeya's show in the Kyoto branch of Kodama Gallery has been printed in the March issue of Artforum.

Re: No postings in February

Dear All,

Some of you were asking why there were no blog postings in February. The answer is simple: after wrapping up all the exams and grading for the Fall semester I had to give my full attention to final manuscript revisions for my monograph on Alexei Remizov. It is being published by the main division of Northwestern University Press, and will be available later this summer. If you would like to know more about the the book, here is a link to the NU Press' page. Thank you for checking in on me.

Julia

"The Pink & Blue Project": JeongMee Yoon

IHN Gallery in Seoul is showing the second installment of JeongMee Yoon's photographic series "The Pink and Blue Project." The idea behind the series was simple enough—to examine what conditions children's blue and pink preferences: is it nature, nurture, marketing?—but Yoon's execution is both meticulous and imaginative. The first set of photographs, in most cases taken in 2006, shows their subjects (little girls and boys) encircled by their color-coded possessions—pink and blue, respectively. Shot with the wide-angle lens, the images initially overwhelm by the mass of monochrome objects big and small. In the pink prints in particular, the girls seem to blend into the field of pink dolls, dresses and books.

The Pink Project I - Maia and Her Pink Things, 48x48", Light Jet Print, 2006, ©Jeongmee Yoon, Image courtesy of the artist

The Pink Project II - Maia and Her Pink & Blue Things, 48x48", Light Jet Print, 2009, ©Jeongmee Yoon, Image courtesy of the artist

Fast forward another three years, to 2009, and the same children pose in updated interiors. The boys, of course, are still proudly showing off their cars and sports parphanelia. The girls, many having "graduated" out of pink and into blue, are now independent from their background. No longer cute live ornaments swathed in pink and matching their arranged surroundings, the girls appear to take charge over the multitude of objects around them. It could be just the function of color (colder blue does not subsume their pinkish skin), or it could be my own reading based on the ubiquitous assumption that pink=marketing of girlhood=compromised personality. In either case, Maia and Her Pink Things, (2006) compared to Maia and Her Pink & Blue Things, (2009) is a case in point. In the early print the girl is subsumed into the pink arrangement, in fact the pink bear and the Disney princess are more visible than Maia herself. In the later version, where she is posed on the dividing line that splits the room diagonally into pink and blue parts, the pink portion is in the background, appropriately, providing an interior version of atmospheric perspective. That is the limit of its function in the image. Meanwhile, the blue segment (of which Maia is now a part—she is wearing a blue top), lets the viewer know unequivocally the relative place of the person and her possessions—Maia is the focus here.

You can see more of Yoon's work on her webpage.