Following our party at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, we celebrated the relaunch of Art Space Tokyo in style at TODs.

The party was full of people featured in AST, but given the book’s focus on a specific set of venues, it was fantastic to see so many artists, gallerists, curators, collectors and editors from the broader Tokyo art scene in attendance.

You can check out the full photo report on the Pre-Post website.

Reviews

• William Eggleston at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art [Artforum]

• “What is Architecture?” at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo [Artscape]

• Naoya Hatakeyama at Taka Ishii Gallery [Japan Times]

• Robert Waters at Mizuma Art Gallery [Japan Times]

• William Eggleston at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art [TAB]

• “Wind Speed 0” at Radi-um [TAB]

• Osamu Mori at Yamamoto Gendai [TAB]

• Tam Ochiai at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art [TAB]

• “Meaningful Stain” at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo [TAB]

• “Darkness for Light – Czech Photography Today” at Shiseido Gallery [TAB]

• Yuki Matsumura at Take Ninagawa [TAB]

• Yukihiro Taguchi at Gallery aM [TAB]

• Shinjuko at Parabolica-bis [TAB]

Interviews

• Adrian Favell [TAB]

Features

• An Indexical Survey of Tokyo in the Age of Cinema [ART iT]

• Japan as Galapagos [ART iT]

• The Mitsubishi Ichigokan [Artscape]

• 3331 Arts Chiyoda [Realtokyo]

Obits

• Yoshitaka Azuma (1977–2010) [ART iT]

Kisato Kusano, the owner of the renowned On Sundays bookstore in the basement of the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (one of the 12 spaces featured in the book) generously offered us the chance to use the space so we could bring in a big bad crowd of book lovers for an evening of free beer, wine and sake.

Thank you to everyone who came! It was great to see you out in force!

Photos by Xin Tahara and Ashley Rawlings.

Left: The stunning exterior of the Watari Museum.
Right: Kusano-san laying out copies of Art Space Tokyo.

The On Sundays bookstore quickly filled up with supporters.

AST editor Ashley Rawlings talking to Megumi Matsubara from the Tokyo-based architectural office “Assistant.”

Kisato Kusano, the owner of On Sundays book store.

AST co-author, designer and publisher Craig Mod gives a speech about the Kickstarter fundraising that made this second edition a reality.

Naoki Matsuyama and Lena Oishi, who helped with the translation of Art Space Tokyo.

Reviews

• “Roppongi Crossing 2010: Can There Be Art?” [Artforum]

• Makoto Aida at Mizuma Art Gallery [ART iT]

• Shusaku Arakawa at the National Museum of Art, Osaka [Artscape International]

• Toyoshige Watanabe at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura [Japan Times]

• William Eggleston at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art [Japan Times]

• Fergus Freehily at Misako & Rosen [Japan Times]

• “From the 11th Chinese National Art Exhibition 2009: Contemporary Fine Art from China” at the Nara Prefectural Museum of Art [Japan Times]

• Yoshitomo Nara at Tomio Koyama Gallery [Japan Times]

• Aleksandr Rodchenko & Varvara Stepanova at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum [Japan Times]

• “Open Space 2010” at the NTT Inter Communication Center [TAB]

• Genichiro Inokuma at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery [TAB]

• Ritsuko Yamashita at hpgrp Gallery Tokyo [TAB]

• Seiichi Furuya at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography [TAB]

• Pawel Jaszczuk at Zen Foto Gallery [TAB]

• “Where Is Architecture? Seven Installations by Japanese Architects” at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo [TAB]



Interviews

• Aki Sasamoto [ART iT]

• William Eggleston [Japan Times]

• David Elliott [Japan Times]

Features

• Wilhelm Sasnal [ART iT]

• Jean Fabre [ART iT]

• 3331 Arts Chiyoda [Artscape International]

• Teratotera Art Project [TAB]

Obits

• Kazuo Ohno (1906–2010) [ART iT]

• Remembering Shusaku Arakawa (1936–2010) [ART iT]

• Kazuo Ohno (1906–2010) [The Guardian]

Craig’s essays, “Books in the Age of the iPad” and “Embracing the Digital Book” have won him attention from people across the publishing and IT industries, including the New York Times tech blog.

For Craig, Art Space Tokyo, and in particular the Kickstarter-funded reprint, are important milestones in developing his ideas about how we can maximize the potential inherent in digital publishing.

The second edition of Art Space Tokyo is now printed and copies will be shipped out to our loyal customers shortly.

Next week, I will be meeting with Craig in Tokyo to hold some AST events, discuss the AST iPad version and think about where we will take this project next. More on this soon!

To our amazement, we hit the $15,000 mark after only two weeks, and pledges continued to pour in over the remaining three weeks of the fundraising period.

On May 1, we reached an astonishing total of $23,790, which is allowing us to go ahead with a full second print-run, as well as develop the iPad version.

We are profoundly grateful the 265 backers who made this possible.

Over the past month, Craig and I have been mailing each other back and forth, fixing up a few missteps in the original, and polishing the book’s editorial and design.

The 2010 edition of Art Space Tokyo is at the printers right now and will be with you soon…

Reviews

• “Roppongi Crossing 2010: Can There Be Art?” at the Mori Art Museum [Artforum]

• Yoshiji Takehara at Gallery MA [Artscape]

• “Plastic Memories – To Illuminate ‘Now’” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo [Japan Times]

• “Jan Fabre x Katsura Funakoshi: Alternative Humanities” [Japan Times]

• Ryoichi Yamazaki at Nakaochiai Gallery [Japan Times]

• “Akihisa Hirata x SHIMABUROS.” at Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto [Japan Times]

• “Post Fossil: Excavating 21st Century Creation” at 21_21 Design Sight [TAB]

• Mika Ninagawa at G/P Gallery [TAB]

• “Roppongi Crossing 2010: Can There Be Art?” at the Mori Art Museum [TAB]

• “Roppongi Crossing 2010: Can There Be Art?” at the Mori Art Museum [TAB]

• “Aleksandr Rodchenko + Varvara Stepanova: Visions of Contructivism” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Museum [TAB]

Interviews

• Henk Visch and Ryue Nishizawa (Part 1) [ART iT]

• Henk Visch and Ryue Nishizawa (Part 2) [ART iT]

• Nobuyoshi Araki [Japan Times]

• Kohei Nawa [Studio Banana TV]

• Noriyuki Haraguchi [TAB]

Features

• 3331 Arts Chiyoda [Artscape]

• Toshiki Okada [Realtokyo]

Obits

• Ichiro Haryu (1925–2010) [ART iT]

• Shusaku Arakawa (1936–2010) [ART iT]

Reviews

• “Design-Conscious Apartments Then and Now”at Misawa Homes Seminar Hall [Artscape]

• John Lurie at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art [TAB]

• Art Fair Tokyo [TAB]

• Ryoko Kimura at Kido Press [TAB]

Interviews

• Yasumasa Morimura (Part 1) [ART iT]

• Yasumasa Morimura (Part 2) [ART iT]

Features

• Yoshinari Nishio in Nairobi [Artscape]

• Boat People Association and Tokyo Artpoint Project [Artscape]

• The Galapagosi-isation of the Japanese art scene [Adrian Favell on ART iT]

• Masato Nakamura and Takashi Murakami [Adrian Favell on ART iT]

• Teppei Kaneuji, Koki Tanaka and Tatzu Nishi [Adrian Favell on ART iT]

• Fram Kitagawa and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale [Adrian Favell on ART iT]

• Shinji Kohmoto [Japan Times]

• Johnny Walker and the Bacon Prize [Japan Times]

• Art Fair Tokyo [Japan Times]

Wow! We have reached our goal of $15,000 in only 16 days!

Craig and I are bowled over by the enthusiasm that people have shown for the Kickstarter project since the page went live on March 29.

We want to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who have pledged. Your enthusiasm and backing mean a great deal to us.

The project doesn’t close until May 1, so there’s still a chance to join us!

All additional funding we receive will be invested in expanding the second print run, developing an iPad version of the book with supplementary content, and potentially starting work on guides to art scenes in other cities around the world.

If you haven’t already, please join us!

The book’s original print-run of 1,500 copies has been sold out for more than a year. If you’re one of our loyal followers who is frustrated not to have gotten hold of a copy, then this is your chance.

Demand has remained very high, so we bought back the copyright and are reprinting it ourselves, also with plans to develop an iPad version.

We have set up an Art Space Tokyo Kickstarter page, where you can pre-order your copy of the new edition.

Even though this page has only been up for less than a week, and Craig and I haven’t even sent out a mass e-mail about it yet, the response has been incredible.

Just by posting news of the reprint on Facebook and Twitter, as well as some coverage on a couple of popular blogs, we have already raised over $5,000!

This is an experiment in community-funded publishing. If we cannot secure $15,000 in pre-orders by May 1st, printing will not go ahead and you will not be charged. You’re only charged if we raise enough interest and reach our minimum goal.

We hope you’re as excited about this as we are, and that you will continue to give your support to Art Space Tokyo.

Reviews

• “Garden of Painting: Japanese Art of the 00s” at the National Museum of Art, Osaka [Artscape]

• Hisashi Hojin at Prismic Gallery [Artscape]

• Taiji Kiyokawa at Kiyokawa Taiji Memorial Gallery [Japan Times]

• Takuya Tsukahara at Syadai Gallery [Japan Times]

• “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Life=Works=Projects” at 21_21 Design Sight [Japan Times]

• “Chronicle 1945, 1951, 1957: A Revision of Postwar Japanese Art” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo [Japan Times]

• “MAM Project: Jules de Balincourt” at the Mori Art Museum [Japan Times]

• Book Review: “Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s” [NYAB]

• Yasumasa Morimura at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography [TAB]

• “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Life=Works=Projects” at 21_21 Design Sight [TAB]

• MOT Annual 2010 - Neo-ornamentalism at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo [TAB]

Interviews

• Nara Yoshitomo [ART iT]

• Dan Graham [Japan Times]

• Yasumasa Morimura [Japan Times]

• TABuzz #12:Tony

Reviews

• Teppei Kaneuji at ShugoArts [Artforum]

• Miwa Yanagi at Rat Hole Gallery [Artforum]

• “Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love” at the Mori Art Museum [ART iT]

• Teppei Kaneuji at ShugoArts [Frieze]

• Tsuyoshi Tane and Teppei Kaneuji at Taka Ishii Gallery and ShugoArts [Japan Times]

• G-tokyo art fair [Japan Times]

• “Garden of Painting” at the National Museum of Art, Osaka [Japan Times]

• Jack McLean, Patrick Tomlinson and Natasha Rees at RBR Gallery [Japan Times]

• Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography [Japan Times]

• Chise Shimomura at Musée F [TAB]

• Yukihiro Taguchi at Mujin-to Production [TAB]

• Tomoaki Suzuki at SCAI The Bathhouse [TAB]

Features

• A tour of Tokyo’s galleries [The Guardian]

• Art and social change in Japan [Tactical Museum]

• “Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love” (Part 1) at the Mori Art Museum [We Make Money Not Art]

• “Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love” (Part 2) at the Mori Art Museum [We Make Money Not Art]

Interviews

• Miyake Saori [ART iT]

• Toshiki Okada [TAB]

The tireless philanthropists at Art Beat have just launched their iPhone apps for Tokyo and New York, which means you will never get lost on your way to an exhibition again!

As with the main sites themselves, you can browse hundreds of events by area, media, opening nights and user-rated popularity, but all with the added benefit of GPS.

The NY app is going for a discounted rate of $0.99 until the end of February, while the Tokyo app is priced at $1.99.

As a sign of how in-demand this service is, for the past week the Tokyo app has been in the top five of all paid apps on the Japan iTunes store!

Meanwhile, TAB continues its donation campaign. They’re nearly at the 500,000 yen mark, but that’s only one-third of the way to their target amount. If you haven’t already, please show your support to this essential goldmine of information.

In this video she is performing Love is the End of Art (2009) in collaboration with British artist, writer and musician Momus at Zach Feuer Gallery. While Sasamoto performed her own sequences of actions, Momus stalked her, playing both the roles of the art critic and the unrequited lover.

Sasamoto will be performing in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (February 25 – March 30).

In the following video, produced for the Biennial, she muses about the formal and physical relationship between chikuwa (a type of cylindrical fish cake), donuts and the body—ideas that may inform her work-in-progress for the exhibition.

Update (February 25)

The New York Times has uploaded a video of Sasamoto in her studio, talking about and performing part of Strange Attractors, her piece for the Whitney Biennial.

Let’s start with some quirky explorations of space by Berlin-based video/installation artist Yukihiro Taguchi.

Moment (2007)

Nest (2008)

Nest No.2 (2009)

Reviews

• Kosuke Ichikawa at Foil Gallery [Artforum]

• Rei Naito at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura [ART iT]

• “8 Days – Beuys in Japan” at Art Tower Mito [ART iT]

• Tabaimo at the Yokohama Museum of Art [ART iT]

• “Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love” at the Mori Art Museum [Artscape]

• “Architecture of the Future” at Mistubishi-Jisho Artium [Artscape]

• “No Man’s Land” at the former French Embassy [Artscape]

• “No Man’s Land” at the former French Embassy [Japan Times]

• “The Outline: The Unseen Outline of Things” at 21_21 Design Sight [Japan Times]

• Cecil Balmond at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery [Japan Times]

• Ihei Kimura and Henri Cartier Bresson at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography [Japan Times]

• “Paintings by Four Artists” at Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto [Japan Times]

• Nagisa Oshima at the National Film Center [TAB]

• Ihei Kimura and Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography [TAB]

• Haruo Mitsuta at Radi-um [TAB]

• Motohiko Odani at Maison Hermès’ Le Forum Gallery [TAB]

• G-tokyo 2010 art fair at the Mori Arts Center [TAB]

Interviews

• Nobuyoshi Araki [ART iT]

• Yang Fudong [Japan Times]

• Cheungvogi architectural practice [TAB]

• Fumiko Imano [TAB]

And your Murakami Moment of the month…

Tokyo Art Beat recently launched an appeal for donations to help it stay afloat in 2010.

TAB is a nonprofit organization, so much of its activities are realized only through the generosity of dozens of volunteers. But the site simply cannot exist without revenue to support its core team of five paid staff. These are the people who keep TAB up to date, adding and translating information about the hundreds of art, design, architecture and fashion events taking place every week.

This cause hits close to home for me, because I know how much work these people put into keeping TAB running—I was a translator and editor there for nearly three years. On top of the event listings TAB’s staff works on commissioning and distributing limited-edition artist T-shirts, organizing events, and publishing a bi-monthly art map that you can pick up all over the city. These people live and breathe the Tokyo art scene and they want nothing more than to make it easier for you to find your way in.

I just made a donation and it was encouraging to see the donation bar jump up a decent amount within 24 hours, showing that there are other people out there who care. If you’re passionate about contemporary art in Japan, please, please keep the information flowing and give these brilliant people a boost.

Following weeks of dropping hints and teasers on his blog, long-time Tokyo-based design writer and editor Jean Snow has finally launched his new online magazine.

Snow magazine offers news and guest-columns covering the cultural landscape of Tokyo and Japan, as well as some syndicated content from the Néojaponisme web journal and Paper Sky magazine.  And it’s a joy to look at!

It’s a much-needed successor to PingMag, the popular online design magazine that ceased publication with the recession.

This is running a little late maybe, but Happy New Year!

Where to in 2010?

The Art Space Tokyo blog was less dynamic in 2009 than I would have liked. My move from Tokyo to New York in January last year meant that I’ve had to run it as a bit of a skeleton service since then. I haven’t had the time to post weekly updates on art in Tokyo, so the best I could do was to keep compiling the monthly round-ups of links to exhibition reviews, artist interviews and feature articles.

These long lists of links may not be the most exciting things to receive on your RSS feed, but I think that in the long term this archiving of the main sources of information on the Tokyo art scene is a useful project, and one that isn’t being undertaken anywhere else.

In any case, Craig and I are working on new developments for AST in 2010, details of which we will bring to you over the next couple of months.

Until then, thank you for keeping your eye on AST, and please stay tuned for more!

Reviews

• Sandro Chia at the Italian Cultural Institute [TAB]

• “Luxury in Fashion Reconsidered” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo [TAB]

• Taku Obata + Rei Aruga + Ken Hayashida at Tokyo Wonder Site, Hongo [TAB]

• Christopher Bucklow at Emon Photo Gallery [Japan Times]

• “Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love” at the Mori Art Museum” [Japan Times]

• Jean-Claude Wouters at Marunouchi Gallery [Japan Times]

• Kengo Kuma at Gallery Ma [Artscape]

• “CREAM – International Festival for Arts and Media Yokohama” [ART iT]

• The 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale” at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum [ART iT]

Interviews

• TABuzz #11: Shai Ohayon

• SymbioticA [TAB]

• Rei Naito [TAB]

• Rei Naito [ART iT]

• Tabaimo [ART iT]

• Pipilotti Rist [ART iT]

• Thomas Ruff [ART iT]

• Olafur Eliasson [Japan Times]

Features

• Year in Review 2009 [TAB]

• Japanese artists at the Asia-Pacific Triennial [Japan Times]

• Changes in the financial landscape of Tokyo’s art scene during the 2000s [Japan Times]

• Lieko Shiga at the International Festival for Arts and Media Yokohama [Artscape]

• Zenpukuji Park and Yokobo Art Space [Artscape]

... And your Murakami Moment of the month.