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Art Marathon: The Armory Show 2012, part 1

With the stars and stripes sailing in the wind against the cloudless sky, a proud and powerful symbol high atop the venue for one of the largest art fairs in the world, the 14th edition of Armory Show is showing no fear from its looming competitor, as the first New York showcase of British fair mongers Frieze are threatening to impose their dominance in May. This year the Armory fair revived its old image when totally redesigning their long time venues Pier 92 & 94 and decreased their number of exhibitors (228 instead of 274 in 2011) that include Focus: Nordic bringing in a touch of Scandinavia. Armory 2012 has reported a huge turn up of visitors (more than 60,000) and many galleries had impressive sales results. Same as usual then? NY contributor Sebastian Kaempf visited the fair to bring M-KOS readers a visual sampler of the action on site.


German artist Michael Reidel’s solo presentation at David Zwirner’s booth. All his work was sold out within 30 minutes of VIP preview.
 
 

Cindy Sherman’s 1978 Untitles film Still with the reflection of Jenny Holzer’s work at Sprüth Mager. Sherman’s work was sold for undisclosed price = a lot of money.
 
 

Jota Castro “Buscando Americas” at Gonzalez y Gonzalez, Santiago.
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Art Marathon: Tokyo part 3

3331 Arts Chiyoda is a former junior high school transformed into a vast art complex, opened in 2010. The venue inhabits a number of art galleries, design offices, a wood workshop, artist studios, a library, a roof top organic garden as well as a café and restaurant. Although the space is owned by local government and there are many community based programs, it is actually run by a private association. M-KOS visited the featured show 3331 Independents Scholarship (7–29 January 2012) at the main gallery, an annual open submission where eight finalists were selected individually by seven different juries and audience voting.
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Art Marathon: Tokyo, part 2

For the second round of our Tokyo Art Marathon, M-KOS visited five of the eight contemporary art galleries that occupy the fifth to seventh floor of Maruhachi warehouse building in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa.

TOMIO KOYAMA GALLERY
Yoko Ono: Light (10 Dec 2011 – 28 Jan 2012)


© Yoko Ono. Courtesy Tomio Koyama Gallery

Unfortunately we are not able to publish photos of Yoko Ono’s installation due to strict copyright regulations. Yoko Ono showed two installations to bring light and hope for Japanese people in the wake of Great East Japan Earthquake. On the seventh floor, Tomio Koyama Gallery invited audiences to walk around Ono’s dimly lit space by handing out small torches to guide us through a labyrinth made of black mesh, circulating around a faint source of light glaring in the centre. For the sixth floor gallery space, Ono offered a performance on the opening night, writing Japanese characters on canvas walls, such as Imagine, Hope, Eternity, Dream and more. The middle of the same space was displayed several found objects from the house of Ono’s friend, destroyed to its foundations in Sendai by the earthquake.

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Art Marathon: Tokyo, part 1

Unlike most other Asian countries (Happy Lunar New Year of Dragon, BTW), Japan celebrates its new year on the first of January. For this occasion, three days of public holidays are followed by another long holiday weekend, celebrating the coming-of-age of 20 year olds. Many Japanese art galleries see a slow start to the year, as the country settles into holiday activities such as soaking in hot springs. Nevertheless, M-KOS still found a few good art galleries to visit in Tokyo, although this is not our usual long winded marathon. Here is a taster what we’ve seen (part one of three).

SCAI THE BATHHOUSE
Nobuko Tsuchiya: We Are Living In A Time Machine (18 Nov 2011 – 28 Jan 2012)


Situated in the neighbourhood of Yanaka where many traditional houses can recall a period townscape, the gallery SCAI THE BATHHOUSE refurbished what used to be a public bathhouse (Sento), and to this day kept the original facade. Courtesy SCAI THE BATHHOUSE. Photo by M-KOS

Exhibition view. 11th Dimension Project 1 (left) & 2 (right), 2011. Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE. Photo by M-KOS

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Art Marathon: Villa Tokyo

Two weeks ago, M-KOS posted an interview with Raster, a Warsaw based contemporary art gallery. Most recently they organized the latest edition of their ongoing “Villa” project series. This edition, entitled “Villa Tokyo” took place in Kyobashi, downtown Tokyo. One of M-KOS’ correspondents sent on-location photos of the event, posted below. More can be viewed from Villa Tokyo’s Facebook page or Raster’s blog.


Performance by Prinz Gholam, presented by Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris

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Art Marathon: Frieze Week pt4 – Sunday

Sunday Art Fair

Sometimes not knowing what to expect out of a certain experience will heighten our level of satisfaction more so than anything predictable. The Sunday Art Fair was one such experience, held at Ambica P3, a massive 14,000 square foot open space just a stone’s throw from Frieze. Three galleries jointly organised Sunday Art Fair: Croy Nielsen (Berlin), Limoncello (London) and Tulips & Roses (Brussels). It launched last year in the guise of replacement for the sadly missed Zoo Art Fair, both being, incidentally, sponsored by the Zabludowicz Collection. Refreshingly, a total of 20 international galleries each presented one or two artists and separated their own area simply by marking white lines on the floor, to give visitors a wonderful sense of openness and freedom to move around and enjoy the venue’s architecture. For this reason and because of the high quality of the work presented, Sunday Art Fair demonstrated a strong challenge to Frieze’s hegemony of London art fairs this year.

Christian Jankowski at Proyectos Monclova (Mexico City)


Messages in a bottle – “Review” (2011)
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