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A Piano Played by Five Pianists at Once (First Attempt) (2012), video installation with HD video (run time 57 sec), two drawings, temporary wall. Created with University Art Galleries, University of California, Irvine. Courtesy Koki Tanaka; Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou; and Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo.


The media artist Koki Tanaka will represent Japan at the 2013 Venice Biennale, it was announced by the Japan Foundation on May 14. The commissioner of the Japan Pavilion is Mika Kuraya, a curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Kuraya's proposal of a solo exhibition by Tanaka was selected from a group of five other candidates that included proposals for the likes of Tadashi Kawamata, On Kawara, Yoko Ono and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Kuraya and Tanaka plan to address the aftereffects of the March 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in a reconsideration of how Japan presents itself to the world. In doing so, they hope to use Tanaka's video and installation works to question the possibilities for how we understand the experiences of others through our own viewpoints. They currently plan to organize a series of participatory "exercises" that will directly and indirectly deal with diverse aspects of the catastrophe. The exercises will then form the basis for a series of around 10 new video works. Examples include asking office workers to descend the emergency stairwells of a high-rise building en masse, as quietly as possible, and holding discussions with workers in the electric power industry about what jobs they might have taken had they not been chosen for their current employment.

The proposal builds upon recent projects by Tanaka such as A Haircut by 9 Hairdressers at Once (Second Attempt) (2010) and A Piano Played by Five Pianists at Once (First Attempt) (2012). Currently based in Los Angeles, Tanaka is considered to be one of Japan's most interesting young artists, and has exhibited widely in Japan and overseas. He was included in the 2011 Yokohama Triennale, the 2008 Gwangju Biennale, and in the influential survey of Japanese art in the 2000s, "The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop," held at the Contemporary Art Gallery at Art Tower Mito in 2007. Since 2009, Tanaka has been a regular contributor to ART iT's Japanese-language site, writing the epistolary column, Tanaka Koki Shitsumon suru (Tanaka Koki Questions).

The co-founder of what is now one of Asia's most successful contemporary art fairs, Art HK, is seeking to recreate the same international market magic for the Pacific region. Tim Etchells, of the British exhibitions company SME Ltd, is now spearheading a fair for Sydney, which will launch in April 2013. Billed as the first event of its kind for Australia's largest city, Sydney Contemporary follows the model established by the Melbourne Art Fair, which also runs every other year. In fact, Etchells has agreed with the Melbourne Art Foundation to manage and operate the Melbourne Art Fair starting from 2014. Etchells, who is also behind the startup modern and contemporary art fair in London, Art13 London, has established Art Fairs Australia Pty Ltd to operate his Australian projects, naming Francesca Valmorbida as the director of Sydney Contemporary.

Australia has an active domestic market for contemporary art with healthy commercial gallery scenes in both Sydney and Melbourne. In a statement to the press, Etchells said, "Sydney Contemporary represents the first time this city has hosted a serious, high-end art fair. We expect it to play a significant role in helping to focus attention on the Sydney art scene in the same way that Art HK focused attention on Asian art."

In May 2011, Etchells and his partners in Asian Art Fairs Ltd, the company behind Art HK, sold a 60 percent stake to the Art Basel art fair behemoth, operated by MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd. It was recently announced that starting from 2013, Art HK will officially be branded as part of the Art Basel group, with current fair director Magnus Renfrew joining Art Basel's executive board as Asia Director in addition to directing the Hong Kong fair.