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Photo: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
This November, Art Week Tokyo 2023 returns for a four-day event with a strong line-up featuring 11 institutions and 39 galleries. Tokyo’s largest citywide initiative for contemporary art, the upcoming edition’s public days will run November 2 to 5, with VIP events starting on October 31.
The participating museums include the country’s flagship institution for modern and contemporary art, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, to municipal museums, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, as well as the private Mori Art Museum, which anchors the burgeoning gallery district of Roppongi.
The galleries feature programs that have shaped the history of contemporary art in Japan, including Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, Gallery Koyanagi, Taka Ishii Gallery, Ota Fine Arts, and SCAI The Bathhouse. These galleries are joined this year by two additional stalwarts, Tomio Koyama and ShugoArts.
Kana Kawanishi Gallery. (Photo: Nobutada Omote)
Known as the third-generation galleries, Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Misako & Rosen, Mujin-to Production, Nanzuka Underground, Take Ninagawa, and Waitingroom will also stage exhibitions that reflect the sensibility of Japanese contemporary art over the past decade or so.
Art Week Tokyo is also renewing its collaboration with Art Basel for the third consecutive year.
KEIICHI TANAAMI, “The Mirror of the World,” installation view, Nanzuka Underground, Tokyo, 2022. (Photo: Keiichi Tanaami, courtesy Nanzuka)
An exciting artist line-up
Atsuko Ninagawa, director and co-founder of Art Week Tokyo, shared some of the key highlights to The Peak.
“I think visitors will be fascinated to learn about the work of Okinawa-based photographer Mao Ishikawa, who is receiving her first survey at a Tokyo institution at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, and of course the exhibition “Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living” at Mori Art Museum is addressing an urgent topic with historic works and new commissions by Japanese and international artists, ranging from Monira Al Qadiri and Pierre Hugyhe to Yutaka Matsuzawa and Apichatpong Weerasethakul,” she said.
Ninagawa added that she is especially keen to see the young artists who are being showcased by major galleries.
Among them, Arisa Kumagai’s multi-part works combining photorealistic paintings with enigmatic printed texts will be on view at Gallery Koyanagi, while Tomio Koyama Gallery is debuting up-and-coming painter Rika Minamitami. There will also be a chance to see artists who are based outside of Tokyo, such as multimedia artist Saori Miyake at Waitingroom.
Naho Kawabe & Hanae Utamura, “Strata,” installation view, Waitingroom, 2022. (Photo: Shintaro Yamanaka (Qsyum!), courtesy of Waitingroom)
This year’s featured international artists range from Korean Dansaekhwa artist Ha Chong-hyun at Blum & Poe to German photographer Candida Höfer at Kotaro Nukaga, Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers at Taro Nasu, Mexican mixed-media artist Bosco Sodi at SCAI The Bathhouse, and British artist Derek Jarman, whose mixed-media paintings and films will be shown at Ninagawa’s gallery, Take Ninagawa.
New curated sales platform: AWT focus
This year’s edition will also see the launch of AWT Focus, a new curated sales platform that aims to make art history accessible to broad audiences.
Kenjiro Hosaka. (Photo: Keizo Kioku)
The exhibition will be held at the historic Okura Museum of Art, located on the grounds of the Okura Tokyo, Art Week Tokyo’s partner hotel. Established in 1917 by pioneering industrialist Kihachiro Okura, the Okura Museum of Art is one of Japan’s first private art museums and a symbol of the contributions visionary art patrons make to shaping the country’s cultural landscape.
The dramatic exterior of the Okura Museum of Art in Toranomon. (Photo: Okura Museum of Art)
Expanded community and educational programs
This year will also see the continued run of its pop-up AWT Bar platform, which will be hosted at Art Week Tokyo co-founder and art patron Kazunari Shirai’s sleek Aoyama complex.
In addition to commissioning an emerging architect to design the interior and inviting artists to conceive original art cocktails, Art Week Tokyo is also commissioning an emerging chef to create dishes to be served on-site.
This year’s AWT Bar architect is Suzuko Yamada, one of Japan’s most innovative young architects. Her design conjures an ethereal bar made out of thin metal tubes suspended in midair, inspired by how people and things come together to make space.
The AWT Bar of 2022, a specially designed environment by architect Motosuke Mandai. (Photo: Art Week Tokyo)
Shinsuke Ishii, owner and chef of Sincère in Sendagaya — praised by Michelin for his “gloriously original cuisine” — is producing new food creations for the menu. In addition, this year’s three featured artists are Shinji Ohmaki (exhibiting at the National Art Center, Tokyo), Masato Kobayashi (ShugoArts), and Saori Miyake (Waitingroom). They have been working with the bartenders at Wall Aoyama to come up with cocktails that reflect their artistic practices and concepts.
“We see the AWT Bar as both a convivial hub for Tokyo’s art community during Art Week Tokyo and as an extension of our learning programs, in that it is an environment where people can talk about art, reflect on the exhibitions they’ve seen, and think about how art connects to other fields of culture and experience,” Ninagawa says.
Visitors can also expect more educational programs, such as a collaboration between Art Week Tokyo and Keio University Art Center to organise a symposium and roundtable for Japanese and international curators from across multiple generations and contexts. Also planned are outreach events, including collector talks and online talks.
Asked about the interesting market trends in the post-pandemic era, Ninagawa said that there has been an emergence of a new generation of collectors who come from creative fields like design, fashion, and tech.
Installation view of Group show “for TZ” NANZUKA UNDERGROUND, Tokyo, 2022. (Photo: Art Week Tokyo)
She says, “They are still exploring what they like, and while their focus seems to be more on two-dimensional works, I think they are receptive to learning more about the art scene and art history. It’s a big commitment to start buying art, and we hope to further encourage this trend by introducing different models of art patronage through Art Week Tokyo’s programming. “
“This emergence of young Japanese collectors is certainly something to keep an eye on.”
