Shiro Masuyama: A Media Dominated World

Endo-san: Untitled

The Muse

Seminar

The Gallery Exterior

Japan is a tough environment for artists. Tokyo is no London, New York or Berlin. Studio space is sparce; finding affordable exhibition space is almost impossible - which does little to encourage talent. That’s why I set up The Gallery as a non-profit space. Neither rental nor commission was charged. The primary purpose was to support young or emerging artists based in Japan although, as I didn’t want to be bound by my own rules, we were flexibile, so long as the work was distinctive, unconventional and good. (And I made that decision, for wrong or right).

In our own small way, (and believe me this isn’t a plug for what we were doing, there are other innovative galleries in Tokyo) we tried to break down some of the barriers between artists and public. We gave our artists longer exhibition time. The norm in Tokyo is 2-3 weeks. Shows would run for up to 8 weeks. Important, because we asked the artists to produce work specifically for the space. We were not four walls for an existing portfolio to be hung. Two of the photographs show examples of this: Endo-san was able to try out new techniques and work on a significantly larger and more liberating scale than had been possible before. Shiro Masuyama created an installation entitled Media Dominated World, commenting on sexual exploitation by the press. It was a show that he couldn’t put up anywhere else in Tokyo and, surprise surprise, proved to be controversial. Pamela Slass had quaint paintings of erect penis, another no-no in Japan- photographs later.

In one of our early shows, the artist used the Gallery as open studio, painting in situ over a period of two months. This wasn't such a success.

We had a Muse on hand to welcome visitors. Her task was to break down formality, and to add a sense of frivolity to the environment. Originally, she was a MTV VJ and she had a knack of turning up with the most outlandish hairstyles: once with a condom bunching up her hair.

Public seminars were held. The photograph shows one with the artist Terada Mayumi holding a panel discussion with a photographer, curator and filmmaker.

Another event - held in October 2001 - was led by the Swedish artist Karl Duner – who had a concurrent exhibit at the Yokohama Trienalle. He talked about his amazing kinetic sculptures. In the background, his burly music composer played saxaphone all evening, and the whole Swedish community in Tokyo turned up. On hand was Swedish catering and, to add the finishing touch to a Swedish night, vodka. Lots of vodka.

We invited young people and students to the Gallery so that they could be more participative and look at art in as relaxed and unstuffy way as possible. We didn’t push them to be interpretative. We didn’t set questions. We just encouraged them to be in the space for longer than a couple of minutes.

We organised other events that might attract the young: music (Talvin Singh)and dance for example. A show comprising an installation using furniture design and an interactive video was put on by Kei Tominaga. The chairs were like whoopee cushions and I made, and starred, in the video. (This, incidentally, won an award from Frame magazine).

Another artist set up a soup kitchen.

We tried to break down the formality of Japanese museums and galleries, and open ourselves up to not just the art buff but to everyone. We didn’t want to be seen as worthy or corporate, or to be just another gallery space.

We even promoted other museums such as the new Museum Quarter in Vienna when we held a launch party for guests in Japan. We tied up with The Tate residency programme in Tokyo: the video artists Smith/Stewart showed their work.

Our aim was to be as vibrant as possible - in our own limited but unexpected way - a sort of poor man's ICA.

Sunday, August 27, 2000 (Review from the Japan Times)

Dogs at Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery

By JENNIFER PURVIS

The philosophy that primes Jun Fukukawa's work, a combination of painting and sculpture, is a blast from the recent past. Fukukawa is inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda, particularly the book "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge" whose hallucinatory Indian mystical experiences informed a whole generation of hippies in the late 1960s and '70s and popularized the practice of shamanistic rituals in every commune.

Many great artists from the Surrealists through to Joseph Beuys, Mark Rothko, Mike Kelly and even the reticent Ilya Kabakov have assumed the roleof the shaman in their art. Susan Sontag explains in her essay "The Pornographic Imagination" that if in the last century art has been invested with an unprecedented stature ("the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society") it is because one of the tasks some artists have taken up is to make risky trips to the outer reaches of normal consciousness and report back what is there.

To fascinate and enthrall audiences, not merely to educate or entertain them has "made the exemplary modern artist a broker in madness," to inform "regular" people of what is out there, without their having to make the trip themselves. How worthwhile the artistic results from this experience are depends on the authenticity of the work and how it touches on the viewers' own humanity.

Indeed, the work of any artist who places him- or herself in this role may receive widely different evaluations from different viewers. The role of individual viewer experience may explain why art that is trash to some can be a revelation to others.

Fukukawa uses as his familiar the image of the dog, who unveils the hidden world that the artist, sporting a cowboy hat, earnestly insists is in the space that surrounds us, between all things, as real as anything we can perceive with our physical eyes. The dog demonstrates Fukukawa's belief in the palpability of the unseen by making it appear to travel between here and "there."

In one work a dog's sculpted head is suspended on a string in front of a painting, appearing to be in the process of morphing from the hidden world into the real with the canvas acting as the membrane in between. In another painting a reversal occurs as the hindquarters of the dog are seen disappearing into the canvas, as it leaves the world of tactile things for the world of the invisible.

Fukukawa uses the dog as a conduit to actualize the unseen as it enters and leaves through the canvas, which Fukukawa himself stretches from any material he is inspired to use. In one work he stretches transparent Mylar to render invisible the barrier between the surface and the framework of the painting.

Fukukawa recently arrived back from a long stint in France and had no studio within which to work toward a show. The solution was provided by the Saatchi and Saatchi staff, who work in a friendly, easygoing and open office with no one main curator. They handed over the gallery space to Fukukawa to use as an open studio. Thus the artist paints and sculpts his exhibition on site,and everyone is welcome to come and view the work in progress, which will culminate in a finished show by Sept. 12 and then go on until Sept. 30.

The newly opened Tokyo Saatchi and Saatchi office, a few minutes from Aoyama-Itchome, has a large open gallery with high white walls, one of which is curved, and polished wooden floors. The gallery is intended as a totally free space for emerging Japanese artists who cannot afford to exhibit elsewhere,with all proceeds of any work sold going directly to the artist.

Graham Thomas, president and CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi in Japan and the altruistic originator of the concept, points out that this is the only Saatchi office in the world with such a gallery space.

Thomas, reclining on a black designer chair in his uniquely minimal office (his desk is a work unit on a pole; a wide glass wall that swings into a door the only division from the gallery), is expansive and happy about supporting Japanese art, and sees the creativity of the artists exhibiting in the gallery as inspirationalin the Saatchi and Saatchi work environment.

The ability of art to influence the wider commercial environment could help develop a culturally richer world. Still, the number of lawsuits that have recently been filed in Britain by artists who are suing advertising companies for ripping off their ideas is worth pondering. Without being too naeive, and with all the best intentions, any work inspired by artists and used for commercial purposes obviously must be acknowledged.

It would be utterly counterproductive if the paranoid litigious atmosphere that permeates American culture, and apparently now the British art world (Damien Hirst is suing a company for using polka dots) were to foster fear and prevent open and genuine dialogue between disciplines, or exhibitions in spaces like the Tokyo Saatchi and Saatchi gallery.

Jun Fukukawa open studio and exhibition until Sept. 30 at Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery, Infini Akasaka, 8-7-15 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, (03)5775-1869.

(See also this link)

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(Please note that The Gallery is now closed)

"I, Graham Thomas, am the author of this article, The Gallery Saatchi & Saatchi, and I release its content under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and later."