2.25: Toyo Ito plans ‘architecture cram school’
The offices of world-renowned architect Toyo Ito have long been known as the unofficial training ground for successive generations of Japanese architects, including joint-Pritzker Prize winners Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa from the firm SANAA. Now, Ito is taking his mentoring to a new level. More.
2.24: Pulse art fair expands to LA
Amid rumors circulating of Art Basel’s possible “collaboration” with the Art HK art fair, American trade shows continue looking west, not east. The upstart Pulse franchise, which already operates events in New York and Miami, has just announced that it will join the line-up of market players staking claims in Los Angeles. More.
2.20: Tadashi Kawamata’s ‘Tokyo in Progress’ makes progress
Artist Tadashi Kawamata celebrated the raising of the framework for his “Tokyo in Progress” structural intervention at Shioiri Park yesterday, Feb 19, with ceremonial speeches and mochi pounded rice cakes for community participants. Sited along the banks of the Sumida River…the project is intended to reevaluate the urban and communal space of Tokyo. More.
2.18: Piramide Building brings galleries back to Roppongi
Since the rise of a new generation of contemporary art dealers in the 1990s, Tokyo has become famous for its itinerant galleries criss-crossing the city every few years. The latest reshuffling of the Tokyo art map takes effect Feb 18 when a group of four galleries move into new spaces in the Piramide Building in the shadow of the Roppongi Hills lifestyle and office development. More.
2.18: G-tokyo returns for 2nd edition
Spun as a “boutique” art fair when it debuted in 2010, the inaugural edition of G-tokyo was limited to only 15 participating local galleries and a three-day preview and exhibition period in an attempt to minimize the trade show atmosphere typical to commercial art events. With the 2011 edition of G-tokyo opening its vernissage Feb 18, the galleries organizing the fair have decided to minimally tweak that format. More.
2.17: Tokyo’s ‘Yebizo’ media arts festival unveils 3rd edition
While the tendency across Asia has been to think big when it comes to orchestrating cultural spectacles, Tokyo’s annual Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions has been since its founding in 2008 a potential model for a limited, small-scale approach. Also known as “Yebizo” and dedicated to media art, the festival is previewing its third edition Feb 17 as the centerpiece of an art-filled week in Tokyo. More.
2.16: Arists spearhead new biennale in India
The Indian city of Kochi, Kerala, will soon be inaugurating a new biennial art festival, it was announced to the international press Feb 16 in advance of an official launch declaration in Kochi Feb 17. Spearheaded by contemporary artists Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is targeted to launch in 2012. More.
2.16: New ‘concept’ art fair debuts in Tokyo
From Art Fair Tokyo to 101Tokyo Contemporary, Tokyo Photo and G-Tokyo, Tokyo has seen any number of commercial art fairs come and go in recent years, each with its own approach and format, but unfortunately all sharing the same lackluster market results. Happily for Tokyo art watchers – if not the artists and dealers themselves – this trend has not deterred new entries from piling on to the crowded art calendar. More.
2.15: Ai Weiwei cancels Beijing retrospective
As first reported by AFP on Feb 14, Chinese conceptual artist and activist Ai Weiwei has decided to cancel his planned retrospective at Beijing’s private Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA). Primarily through social media such as his personal blog and Twitter, Ai has been a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist regime, as well as a target of intimidation tactics. More.
2.15: QAG|GoMA reopens after Queensland floods
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAG|GoMA) announced in Brisbane today that it will reopen Feb 16 after a month-long hiatus caused by catastrophic floods in the state of Queensland in Australia’s northeastern region. The floods began in December 2010 and continued into January 2011 – with damage estimates starting at AUD 1 billion. More.
2.10: Takahashi Collection reopens in Hinode
After a six-month hiatus, the private gallery Takahashi Collection will be reopening Feb 18 in a new location near Tokyo’s Hinode Pier, it has been announced. The gallery has traversed a good portion of central Tokyo since it was established in 2004 by the psychiatrist Ryutaro Takahashi to display selections from his private holdings of contemporary Japanese art. More.
Extras: Art HK director Magnus Renfrew was in town to check out the G-tokyo art fair for the second year in a row. Asked about rumors that Art Basel is seeking to acquire Art HK, Renfrew acknowledged that exploratory negotiations had taken place but could provide no specifics as to the extent of those negotiations or how they might affect his position with the fair. As for G-tokyo, he commended the high quality of the gallery presentations but questioned whether such a small-scale event could continue to consistently draw collectors from around the region.
Also arriving in time for G-tokyo were gallerist Mihal Kaczynski and curator Agata Jastrzabek from Warsaw’s Raster Gallery, and the Berlin-based Singaporean media artist Ming Wong. Since 2009, Kaczynski and Jastrzabek have been behind a series of annual weeklong ad-hoc gallery events, Villa Warsaw and Villa Reykjavik, respectively. They confirmed that plans are underway for Villa Tokyo to take place this year, with a tentative starting date set for Aug 27. Funding will be provided by the Polish Ministry of Culture.
In transit to his first solo show in China at Guangzhou’s Vitamin Creative Space, Ming Wong was in Tokyo to line up a series of exhibitions and projects. He told ART iT he has confirmed a solo show at the private Hara Museum of Contemporary Art slated to open June of this year. Hara will be hosting the touring show “Ming Wong: Life of Imitation,” which originated at the Singapore Art Museum in mid-2010. For this iteration, Wong plans to turn the 1930s-era Bauhauss-style Hara mansion into a vintage movie theatre, complete with hand-painted billboards in the entryway garden.
Finally, it was announced Feb 23 that painter Toru Kawakubo has been awarded the 3rd Koji Kinutani Prize for painters 35-years-old and under. The prize is intended to promote the advancement of figurative painting.