Photo Reports | TABlog | Tokyo Art Beat

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP holds a solo exhibition of Stanley Donwood, the artist who made Radiohead’s album covers.

Kicking off the Marunouchi Art Weeks, the “New Tokyo Contemporaries” association of seven young galleries (Aoyama | Meguro, Arataniurano, Zenshi, Take Ninagawa, Misako & Rosen, Mujin-to Production and Yuka Sasahara Gallery) are exhibiting their artists’ work throughout the 7th floor of the Shin Marunouchi Building.

Five of Tokyo’s key commercial galleries party out their last night in Roppongi (or not) before heading their separate ways.

The Kagurazaka building now hosts Mori Yu Gallery from Kyoto, while Yuka Sasahara Gallery, and Art Atlantico Gallery have changed spaces.

Artist Alin Huma has opened his apartment for the first in a series of exhibitions, with this one titled “The Edge”.

Gravity-defying installations in one of Tokyo’s most striking exhibition spaces.

Parco Factory and Logos Gallery in Shibuya’s Parco present “Piece of Peace,” a charity exhibition displaying World Heritage Sites modeled in Lego®.

Formerly located in Ebisu, Takefloor 404 & 502 has reopened in a larger space in Higashi Azabu, also changing its name to Take Ninagawa. It celebrated its relocation with a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Misaki Kawai.

Relocating from their ex-warehouse spaces in Kagurazaka to a renovated apartment building in this high-class residential area of Tokyo, the Kodama Gallery, Yamamoto Gendai and Takahashi Collection have now put Shirokane on the art map.

Held at the Agnes Hotel and Apartments in Iidabashi and now in its 4th year, “Art@Agnes” brings 33 of Tokyo’s top galleries together for a weekend-long bed-bound contemporary art fair.

The “Goth” exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art brings together artists from five different countries and examines contemporary practice related to the Gothic style.

After a few months of silence, Marunouchi Gallery, a relatively new gallery in the Otemachi area, has just opened a new photography exhibition of Belgian artist Jean Claude Wouters, now working using an unusual photographic technique.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, one of Japan’s most internationally recognised photographers, displays works from his “Theater” series in a solo show at Gallery Koyanagi.

There is a new addition to the Tokyo area art scene this year. The Six is a collaboration between six art universities, resulting in a first exhibition of students’ work.

Tokyo Contemporary Art Fair 2007, held last weekend at Tokyo Bijutsu Club, is now Tokyo’s third art fair and second contemporary art fair.

Dedicated to the display of photography, Rat Hole Gallery has in the last 12 months held exhibition of such re-known photographers as Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Boris Mikhailov and others. Tuesday night saw the opening of an exhibition by a younger Japanese photographer, Osamu Wataya. His photojournalistic works bring to mind Daido Moriyama’s street photography and the uncanny and disturbing subjects of Diane Arbus’ work.

On September 1st, “Dialogue with the City”, a group show of seven young artists from the Kanto and Kansai areas of Japan opened at BankART NYK in Yokohama. TABlog’s Japanese editor Makoto Hashimoto is an independent curator, and he organized this show, which will travel to Kobe later on. There are many talk events taking place each weekend. Go enjoy the show!

For its recent exhibition of work by Jaume Plensa, Tamada Projects asked visitors to donate their ¥1000 entrance fee to either Tokyo Art Beat or Médecins du Monde. As a result, they raised ¥285,000, — ¥120,000 of it for TAB — and presented the funds at a special closing party on August 4th.

On July 21st, a symposium followed by performances with Chinese artists Cang Xin and Zhu Ming, was held at the Museum of Modern Art Saitama.

The opening of Nishizawa Chiharu’s solo exhibition at Tokyo Gallery was full of people, milling around like the figures in his paintings. The centrepiece is a Steinway piano that he painted, and pianist Ryuji Osaki played away all evening.

The French Institute in Iidabashi is currently holding a month-long series of film screenings and round table discussions about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, centred around an exhibition of photographs by Yosuke Yamahata and Hiromi Tsuchida.

On July 14th, a new gallery opened in Shintomicho. The two gallery owners named the gallery by combining their surnames: Arataniurano. For their inaugural exhibition, they are holding a solo show of Izumi Kato, who was invited to show at the Venice Biennale has held a number of exhibitions in Tokyo. Keen to see the next generation of artists, the gallery was packed with people.

Misako & Rosen Gallery, which opened only six months ago, is currently holding an exhibition of two young artists.

“Ritual” is one of a series of exhibitions being held by Tokyo Wonder Site as part of its TEAM project that aims to support young artists. The opening was full of people who had come to see Mamoru Tsukada, Satoshi Ono and Masaya Chiba’s artworks.

The San Francisco-based graffiti artist Barry McGee is having a solo exhibition at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Harajuku. Across the road, he has revamped the streetscape, covering an empty shop with his trademark icons and graphics.

I checked out this year’s Pola “Promising Young Artists” exhibition – now in its fourth year – which showcases the work of Shuna Araki and Yuko Murata, who were chosen by Tsunehiro Nishimatsu, former producer of NHK’s Shin Nichiyo Bijutsukan.