Clear Your Calendars: G-TOKYO 2011

Alfredo Jaar Solo Exhibition, Kenji Taki Gallery

The most anticipated Tokyo art fair of the year is just around the corner. G-TOKYO 2011, no in its second year, will again be held at the Mori Arts Center Gallery where leading commercial galleries in town will compete for attention. This year the event will incorporate the two-day art fair (February 19th and 20th), followed by exhibition week (February 21–27). This year's exhibitors are: ARATANIURANO, Gallery Koyanagi, Gallery Side 2, hiromiyoshii, KENJI TAKI GALLERY, Kodama Gallery, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Mizuma Art Gallery, Ota Fine Arts, Scai the Bathhouse, ShugoArts, Taka Ishii Gallery, TARONASU, WAKO WORKS OF ART and Yamanoto Gendai. 

For mor information please visit the event website. 

Yuko Murata

Easter, 2010, oil on canvas, 24.2 x 33.3 cm, photo by Kentaro Takioka, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Side 2.

Just a couple of blocks away from Take Ninagawa, Gallery Side 2 is showing the new oil paintings of Yuko Murata. Murata's subject matter of choice is patently representational—animals, plants and landscapes, but despite their mimetic nature her images seem to go beyond what is immediately shown in them. These remarkably restrained oils have an almost Symbolist (think Puvis de Chavannes) ring to them, they display the silence and the melancholy normally foreign to contemporary art. The animals and plants function first and foremost as motifs that prompt Murata's oneiric improvisations.

There are two events in conjunction with this exhibition: a book party at BOOK 246 July 9th, and the artist talk at NADiff July 16.