My two day excursion to The Ginza was my second solo venture into the Tokyo area from my friend’s little apartment in Kita-Narashino. After being completely confused by the trains (which are actually not confusing at all once you start to understand the system) I finally arrived around dusk in one of the most expensive, upscale areas in Tokyo. The largest street in the area is Chuo-Dori, which is bejeweled with upscale retail like as Louis Vutton, Chanel, Hermes, De Beers, Tiffany and Apple.
That is a giant movie screen
Most of the customers were white people
I was under the misguided impression that the instructions I had written down from Google would be sufficient enough to find the first gallery, and from there I could grab a map or brochure to find the rest of the galleries on a list I had put together from the Tokyo Art Beat website.
False.
I wasted a precious hour and a half wandering around all the back streets, wondering if these elusive galleries existed at all, when all of the sudden my eyes refocused to a sight right in front of my face that I recognized as one of the galleries on my list, Gallery G2.
Though basically the size of a walk-in closet, this little gallery was well maintained by a sweet owner who, lucky for me, spoke English. The current show features artists Moriya Reiko and Nakamura Shigeru. Most of the paintings were part of a series called ‘Cosmos’ that depicted images of nebulae and stars created with rhinestones and glitter, but one of the more interesting pieces was the painting of this female figure:
Though I question the intentionality, I really enjoy the texture of the surface, the torn bits of canvas acting as muted embellishments, and the rhinestones surprisingly not distracting from the overall impression that this piece is about something a bit deeper.
From what I can tell on the gallery’s website, the shows they feature range from fairly interesting and high-brow, to very kitschy. Either way, the owner was kind enough to provide me with directions to the next gallery on my list, and A MAP of all the major galleries in the area!
I was able to visit at least four more galleries that evening before they all closed at 7pm. Amongst them were the Canon photo gallery, who’s current exhibit is called “Soul Brothers” and features beautiful black and white photographs by Yoshihiro Tatsuki, postwar photojournalist Emile Muller, and French photographer Bernard Matussiere, who studied under both Tatsuki and Muller.
It was a lovely, if somewhat cold, collection of some of History’s more important photographs, but I was not permitted to photograph the exhibit so I just enjoyed the viewing and moved on.
Another gallery I was able to hunt down was K’s Gallery, another one-room gallery featuring the pieces by Ryoko Fukao. While the artist’s paintings were very reminiscent of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s linear works, my favorite pieces were these tiny paper creations:
I really liked the simplicity of the crisp lines and arrows cut away carefully from the top layer to reveal the hidden layer of magazine images.
Yeah that’s my reflection, hi guys!
I visited two more galleries this evening, Gallery Koyanagi featuring the young Japanese artist Tabaimo who participated in the Venice Biennial and the O Gallery, where I met Yuko Hama, an accomplished young printmaker who was kind enough to share her process with me. Both of these shows were awesome and deserve their own post, so stay tuned!
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