New York Calling: Ashley Rawlings and the 2010 AAP Almanac

While its great to see ART-iT publishing its best of lists and review essays about 2009, it’s a good idea too to get an outside view of the Japanese art scene, so that all its undoubted noise and colour can be put into some kind of global/relative perspective. No-one better to do this than Ashley Rawlings, a long time resident on the Tokyo scene, now features editor at the Art Asia Pacific magazine, based in New York City. Ashley was the editor of the indispensable, and rather beautiful, Art Space Tokyo book, which came out in 2008, published by Craig Mod’s Chin Music Press. This book set itself the task of uncovering some of the lesser known players and locations in the Tokyo art scene, while also documenting the familiar roster of curators, gallerists, and writers that make up its small but dynamic world.

http://www.artspacetokyo.com/

Each year, AAP publishes an almanac which contains a round of the most significant art events and exhibitions that took place in each country the previous year. Ashley does a comprehensive job this year, and it is an essential round up for anyone wanting to know about what is going on in Japan.

I was pleased to see that I’d seen most of the more important things he mentions. Here is a link to my top five shows of the year (just scroll down).

http://www.art-it.asia/u/admin_columns/RpLCtBsAvOlNu3a0G51f/

What is missing from this listing are the shows I wish I’d seen, but couldn’t because I live on the wrong side of the planet most of the time. These would include: Teppei Kaneuji at Yokohama, Daisuke Ohba's solo shows around Tokyo in the Spring (at SCAI and Magical), Tatsu Nishi's ever wacky art installation explorations at ArataniUrano in May, and the big Ryoji Ikeda show at MOT during the summer. Ashley gives a strong mention to Nishi’s brilliant and crazed conversion of the Ginza gallery, as well as Ikeda’s big show and Kaneuji’s solo break out at Yokohama. Ohba is the only one missed here: one of the young discoveries of the year.

I met Ashley for a coffee and chat near his office in the hip, but still grim, West Chelsea neighbourhood of New York City in November. Being away from Tokyo had given him some new perspective on the Tokyo scene: it looked a lot smaller, and a lot less important than so much of the international art crowding the scene in New York. He felt basically it had been a quiet year, with nothing really very exciting happening. I always feel that Japan’s greatest strength is the fact it is out of step a little with the rest of the global art world, that walks to a sometimes monotonous beat drummed out by the same old international superstar curators, fads and fashions. But that means Japan is easily ignored, marginal to the major flows. He cites the example of Kohei Nawa who, whenever he is mentioned in the New York context, is written off as too “aesthetic”. New York writers are always looking for a didactic, political edge. Another low spot for Japan was the almost universally negative reactions to Miwa Yanagi’s big show at Venice, something I’ve written about in a previous blog.

http://www.art-it.asia/u/rhqiun/Vfji90F5ay3CNK8DhvQS/

Ashley obviously misses Tokyo, but is excited by the speed and power of New York, even comparing it to going back “home” to London (he is English, like me). A number of his former colleagues from the Tokyo Art Beat magazine and the 101 Tokyo Art Fair network, have also moved to New York, to set up a New York version of the popular website there. TAB is another example of how resident gaijin have helped give an outside edge to the Tokyo art world, which would be so dangerously insular without it.

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com