Thursday, September 30, 2010

Jim Lee "THE DEEP INSIDE"


Installation view with Untitled (Double Center Line Construction), 2010, acrylic on wood with wire and glue, 14. 75 x 11.75 in. (upper left) and Show Some Horns, 2010, oil enamel on linen with wood, 9 x 14.5 x 2 in. (lower right). Image courtesy of the gallery.

MOTUS FORT has moved to a new space, not too far from their old location in Higashi Kanda. Their inaugural show is Tokyo debut of a Brooklyn based artist Jim Lee whose work is described by Jeffrey Chiedo as "painting hybrids that reflect [Lee's] quirky brand of humor an present themselves as abstract solutions that slip in and out of recognition." Indeed, the works on view seem to function as hermetic objects as well as some sort of meta-commentary on objecthood. Lee's brand of punk Constructivism sits well in the new MOTUS FORT; his art does not look "displayed," instead, becoming a part of the gallery.

Installation view with A Space Between, 2010, acrylic on wood with graphite and oil enamel, 8 x 16 x 4.5 in. Image courtesy of the gallery.

The show will be on through October 16th.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Shirokane Art Complex openings


Maoya Kishi
backronym 1, 2010
mixed media
50 x 50 x 127 cm

Last weekend the four galleries of the Shirokane art complex opened their next round of exhibitions. Kodama gallery presented, for the third time, Maoya Kishi's installations. The new show—backronym—contains a selection of Kishi's mixed media nonrepresentational sculptures with just a hint of kinetics in them.

Two floors above, at the Yamomoto Gendai gallery, Masakatsu Takagi had a two room video installation. The larger of the rooms contained three channel projection of a rather interesting and intensely visceral animation Ymene. Takagi's oneiric pyrotechnics contrast with Kishi's constructions in its emphasis on the random.

Taku Anekawa, mixed media, episode.7 moro

Somewhere in between these two shows is Nanzuka Underground's new exhibition of Taku Anekawa's embroidery books and large format collages. Just as Kishi, Anekawa pieces together the fragments (in his case, pieces of fabric and machine embroidery) to form his own ideosincratic narrative.

The fourth opening reception was held at the London Gallery, one floor above Yamomoto Gendai. Unlike its three neighbors who show only contemporary works, London Gallery features old Japanese art, although does so surroundings designed by none other than Hiroshi Sugimoto himself. The screen in the photo above is most certainly worth a visit to the Shirokane complex.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Kohei Nawa "SYNTHESIS"


Kohei Nawa is one of the young Japanese artists whose work is successfully promoted by Scai the Bathhouse gallery. The 2010 is forming to be something of an annus mirabilis for Nawa: he is participating in the Busan Biennale, as well as representing Japan at the 14th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh. His current projects range from collaborations on mobile phone applications to public art installation in Odaiba. In addition, he is planning to open a new studio in Kyoto from where he will implement and supervise his various undertakings.

Last night's opening at the Scai was one of the best attended I have seen in a Tokyo gallery so far. Among the works on view were the centerpiece PixCell-Double Deer and its head-only version. The first gallery had a wrap-around drawing installation, more drawings were displayed in the larger gallery and upstairs.

The show will be on through the end of October.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Kyoto: Bouke de Vries "PIECES"


Bouke de Vries, Pieces, 2010, detail
Glass, mirrors, variable dimensions, image courtesy of the gallery

Kyoto’s Super Window Project & Gallery is temporarily pausing its activities at their Motoyama Kamigama location to concentrate on various international endeavors (starting with the gallery presenting their artists at Artissima 17). In anticipation of this seasonal closing, the SWP has mounted their last exhibition entitled “Pieces” by Bouke de Vries.

The current installation is comprised of two tall thin glass towers filled with glass fragments at once fragile and dangerous. The resulting tension between power and vulnerability is not unlike what I saw in the last SWP exhibition of Soshi Matsunobe’s paper sculptures: ostensibly hard but, in reality, super delicate works. The metaphor of vulnerability is physically manifested in the glass of De Vries’ ephemeral towers due to the timing of the installation. The exhibition was inaugurated on the anniversary of the World Trade Centre disaster, making the semi-transparent glass shard-filled structures function symbolically as well as viscerally.

Bouke de Vries, Pieces, installation view, image courtesy of the gallery

Unlike the accumulation sculptures of the New Realists, De Vries’ piled up fragments of ceramics and discarded or found materials are not a commentary on the production-accumulation continuum within modern societies. His boxed “life fragments” seem to refer to the condition of fragility of human existence—what was once real becomes an emblematic representation removed from its original context, and forced into the vacuum of glass encasement. In De Vries, the materials that used to form the fabric of peoples’ lives now exist only as fragments, “pieces” which encapsulate the memories of things past.

The show will be on through October 24.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Seoul ARTFORUM Critics' Pick

Here is link to my Critics' Pick of "Nanugi Agency" show from Seoul. It is hosted by a recently opened nonprofit foundation ART + LOUNGE DIBANG. Definitely worth a visit if you are in Seoul before the end of this month.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Anna Fryer "FRICTION" at 3331 ARTS CYD


The 3331 ARTS CYD is currently holding a solo exhibition by Anna Fryer (formerly Zmyslowska). Some may remember her work from the last year's graduation show with Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai), where she is currently working on her PhD in painting.

Outwardly, the biggest difference from her recent contribution to Tokyo Geidai show is Fryer's ample use of the wall to expand her painting beyond the canvas itself (although she has worked with incorporating the wall space earlier, for her solo exhibition "ATMOSPHERIC" held in Sapporo in 2009). The fifteen works in "FRICTION" are arranged in seven clusters of two or three with painted spaces between them.

As she challenges the limits of the frame, Fryer expertly avoids any semblance of decorativity inherent in an extension of the painted surface onto the wall. Moreover, she takes advantage of this newly constructed space to add an extra dimension to her painting, moving her works towards the spacial/painterly constructions El Lissitzky would have approved.

The show will be on through September 27. More information about the artist is on her website.