MOT Satellite, 2017 Spring, by the deep rivers Various sites around Kiyosumi-shirakawa; 11 February to 20 March Upwards into the second exhibition in this venue, ‘Tertiary Sex Characteristics’ by Hanayo, I find myself in a room that’s at stark contrast to the previous space downstairs. There is natural light, detritus scattered about, dead and dry … Continue reading
MOT Satellite, 2017 Spring, by the deep rivers Various sites around Kiyosumi-shirakawa; 11 February to 20 March In cafes, garages, shops, some traditional venues but mostly non-traditional sites for art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) presents a series of artwork, shows and installations across Kiyosumi-shirakawa under the moniker by the deep rivers. There … Continue reading
Agatha Gothe-Snape, Oh Window MAM Project 023 at Mori Art Museum; 4 February to 11 June Composed and choreographed with a level of care akin to surgical precision, Agatha Gothe-Snape’s Oh Window is exquisite. Manufacturing a simplicity through complexity, the artist manages to refine and distill motifs into alloys of idea and material, before deploying … Continue reading
Reijiro Wada, Scarlet Capsule Gallery; 21 January to 19 February Frames and containers lead the charge in a dualistic choreography of soft organic realities housed in hard artificial constructs. Like a molecular composition of couplets, Reijiro Wada plays poetry with material, time and entropy in his exquisite show Scarlet at Capsule Gallery. It’s all glass, … Continue reading
West Tokyo Artist Studio Tour Sunday 29 January With the light starting to fade and one more studio to squeeze in, we take off again and wend our way through more industrial factories and warehouses until we pull up at another nondescript allotment. This is the home of REV: United Artists Studio and it’s the … Continue reading
Malformed Objects: Bricolage for Myriads of Other Bodies _ group show Yamamoto Gendai Gallery; 21 January to 25 February With an exhibition title as mealy-mouthed as Malformed Objects: Bricolage for Myriads of Other Bodies, you’re setting yourself up for a risky excursion into a heavy-handed waffle-forest of academic wankery that sets a velvet rope of … Continue reading
West Tokyo Artist Studio Tour Sunday 29 January, 2017 It becomes apparent pretty quickly, that with 23 studio complexes distributed around this part of western Tokyo, something pretty special and pretty intense is going on. I’ve met a handful of artists only at this one site in about an hour or so, but before … Continue reading
West Tokyo Artist Studio Tour Sunday 29 January, 2017 Exhibitions of art are the thin egg-shell horizon-line of a process far more complex than most people realise. When we talk about art we mostly reference the impact that it has had after the actual engagement with it, a kind of retrospective backstory to a past … Continue reading
Go Watanabe, Light Difference – Face III Urano Gallery; 21 January to 25 February With a lovingly fluid motion we are drawn in, delivered to and destabilised by the mesmerising video works of Go Watanabe at Urano Gallery. In the first room, three moving-images work to ingratiate their way into your inner ear through your … Continue reading
Kohei Sekigawa, figure / out Guardian Garden; 11 January to 27 January Meticulously rendered observational drawing carries a certain appreciative respect in the same way that finely carved figurative marble sculptures do. The attention to detail and focused labour required to execute them well is of an Olympian order, so the residue energies of that … Continue reading
the subMachine 