Apr 22, 2007
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Art Fair Tokyo
TABlog’s Ashley was not a big fan of the recent Art Fair Tokyo, and Tetsuya Ozaki’s latest “Out of Tokyo” column offers up a different, much more positive, take.
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The Ozaki article is very interesting, but he spends a lot more time discussing issues related to Japanese art websites and the “Art Web Meeting 01″ talk at Art Fair Tokyo than he does commenting on the fair itself. I’m not sure I could guess his opinion of Art Fair Tokyo based on the linked article.
Fair enough. He leads off saying it was a success, which is what I found most interesting, considering what TAB had said about it.
I find Ashley’s review very insightful and necessary to better Tokyo’s Art scene. He contextualizes the fair in an informative perspective and as you can see in the comments section, it has started a very engaging and interesting dialogue.
Hooray, for TAB in preserving some kind of integrity in providing an art review that is NOT SELF PROMOTION.
I think it’s important to recognise that much of what I’m criticising is the overall mediocrity of the Tokyo art scene itself and is not solely a critique of AFT.
AFT’s decision to give an accurate representation of the Tokyo art market is totally fair, but I felt that it resulted in a bland show punctuated by only a few highlights. Both from a curatorial and a marketing point of view, the whole fair would have made a better impression had more of the participating galleries not overhung their spaces. This problem affects all art fairs, not just AFT, but then all art fairs could afford to establish more guidelines about presentation.
It’s also worth mentioning that these are my opinions, not necessarily those of TAB or the Gadago NPO.