G-tokyo 2011: Roppongi’s chic art fair

The gallery showcase event returns

Debuting last year and making quite a splash, “G-tokyo” has returned to the Mori Arts Center Gallery.

Though structured in the same three long corridors and again showcasing a tight selection of fifteen Tokyo galleries, the 2011 edition contains more solo and curated shows than last year. This year’s event is also geared more to the general visitor, running an extra week (the “exhibition week”) after all the “art fair” sales are over.

The “G-tokyo 2011” opening night on Friday coincided with four galleries re-opening in the Piramide building, very close to Mori and also a stone’s throw from the previous Roppongi art gallery complex that shut in 2008.

Also, “Mancy’s Tokyo Art Nights” has also been taking place this weekend in an Azabujuban luxury salon bar, and “Tokyo Frontline” has emerged as a wholly new fair at 3331 Arts Chiyoda just days before.

The venue looked much same as last year, with the wide corridors being a welcome change from the usual tight art fair passageways.

Each gallery has a space which is more a show than a typical art fair booth. The spaces seem in fact larger than some entire Tokyo white cube galleries. Here is the Taka Ishii Gallery, with works by Mario Garcia Torres.

Rather than trying to cram their 'booth' with all their stock and wares, many of the galleries in fact only exhibited one work. Here, shugoarts presented 'minimalbaroque IX' by Shigeo Toya.

There were various large 'cracks' for visitors to peer into...

The SCAI the Bathhouse space was much more crowded, especially at the preview. Here a visitor purchases an untitled work by Anish Kapoor.

Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar's work from Kenji Taki Gallery.

Bombay Sapphire sponsored two spaces, the first being this mini 'Imagination in a bottle' gallery connecting two of the main corridors.

The second was the 'Sapphire Bar -- ghost of the glass', a drinking space with light installation designed by Hiroshi Nakamura.

Ethnographic sculpture by Izumi Kato dominated proceedings at Arataniurano.

From Taro Nasu came this series of colorful and irreverent takes on famous images by Djordje Ozbolt.

William Andrews

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William Andrews

William Andrews came to Japan in 2004. He first lived in Osaka, where he was a translator for Kansai Art Beat. Arriving in Tokyo in 2008, he now works as an writer, editor and translator. He writes a blog about Japanese radicalism and counterculture and one about Tokyo contemporary theatre. He is the author of Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima.

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