Frantic

Macoto Murayama

I have been in Japan for the last two weeks, but before that I was able to swing by the CutLog art fair in Paris to meet up with Tokyo gallerist Rodion Trofimchenko, and see his offerings from Frantic Gallery which he fronts and is based out of Setagaya. According to the website, Frantic is directed by someone variously known as Yasuhisa, Yasunobu and/or Yasutoshi Miyazaki (???), but whatever the case the gallery has a smart website and is dedicated to "resisting stereotypes and the stupified image of Japanese contemporary art". I met Rodion a couple of years ago at the opening of one of Tsutomu Ikeuchi's curated shows at Spiral Gallery, Omotesando, which was a prelude to a long evening of hard nosed drinking and discussion about the failings and frustrations of the Japanese art world, and yet the passion for the place that still drives our long term engagements with it. Rodion came out of the curatorial programme at Musachino art school, before taking on the global mission of representing young Japanese artists and Frantic Gallery at major art fairs around the world, and he has been on the road permanently this year, with showings in Paris, Shanghai, Taipei, Basel and Tokyo.

There was not much evidence of Japanese contemporary art at the Paris art fairs this year. At FIAC, which by all accounts has risen to become a major world event on the art calendar, rivalling Frieze and the Armory Show, the only Japanese gallerist listed was Take Ninagawa. Rodion was also on his own at CutLog, out there with his distinctive young Japanese art in a small booth at the Bourse building near Opera. More evidence of the dreaded Galapogosization, methinks.

Rodion was easy enough to find with his newly peroxided white hair and edgy, energetic personality dominating the booth, and he explained how the work of the young 80s artists on show embodies both the characteristically obsessive, craft heavy young Japanese style, while having no trace of the more obvious pop cultural themes typically associated with the place.


Macoto Murayama creates computer generated botanical drawings, that play with a fascinating edge of computer technology being used to execute almost quaint Victorian style botanist's visions.


Cousteau Tazuke meanwhile has developed an extraordinary abstract technique of painting in which he minutely carves lines and strips into clear acrylic panels, pours paint on the block with its holes and elisions, and then exhibits them backwards, so the colour and textures are seen through the clear screen of the untouched side. It sounds like home made DIY, but the results are quite elegant abstract tableaux, almost architectural in their feel, again a somehow digitalised, plastic version of an older line of work -- in this case, Jackson Pollock (although one might also trace a link to the work of Kohei Nawa).

When he was young, back home in Russia, Rodion wanted to be a film director. He also studied business management, and then later art history. He says that being a gallery curator is the perfect way of combining all three. The beautiful people of Paris are gathering for a prize giving by TV channel ARTE to a selected prize winning artist, and we are keen to snag some of the free Kir Royales and hors d'oeuvres doing the circular rounds of the hall. The only Japanese collector I spot is a Takashi Murakami lookalike in a denim workman's hat. He doesn't look very happy, while chatting with his model escort. Could it have been Mr.TM himself, who was meant to be in Paris in connection with Emmanuel Perrotin? No-one else seems to think so. Whatever the case, he was certainly not laughing today: Japanese contemporary art seems to have disappeared off the European radar.

For more information about Frantic Gallery:

http://www.frantic.jp

Check out also Rodion Trofimchenko's writings on the evolutionary curatorial network, Entomorodia:

http://www.entomorodia.com

Cousteau Tazuke can be seen at Frantic Gallery in Tokyo, from 23 - 27 November, and Macoto Murayama from 6 - 11 December.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com