Back in early July I had the great pleasure of having my friend Julie Forgues — artist and professor of photography — come visit for a few weeks, and during that time we had an exhibition for a project of hers, “Land(in)formation,” at Cafe Pause. She introduced the project during that month’s PauseTalk (Vol. 33), and I’ve included here an artist statement and project description, along with the photos, that should help explain the idea behind the show.

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Despite the fact that I’ve been house-bound and on my back for the past month, I’m very glad to say that the “Urban Paper” paper toy art show and book launch is still happening at Cafe Pause next month. Produced by Josh McKible — who you all know from NaniBird — it celebrates the recently launched book Urban Paper: 25 Designer Toys to Cut Out and Build by bringing together new works from a host of designers who were featured inside (including Josh). It’s an awesome book — I have a copy — and so it’s a thrill to be able to help spread the paper toy gospel here in Tokyo.

As you can see above, Josh has designed a very cool poster for the show, starring the show’s mascot. More than just a graphic, the little dude can actually be printed out and built (see below), so get to it.

The show will run September 7-20, and thanks to some good news from my doctor today (and a beautiful x-ray), we’ll be celebrating the opening at next month’s edition of PauseTalk (Vol. 34) on the 7th.

The Speakerdog paper toy exhibition at Cafe Pause is now on! Even better, it will be running for two weeks, until April 20.

The exhibition includes 60 designs, which make up a collection of favorites from all 5 series of Speakerdog paper toys that have been released so far.

If you love what you’re seeing in these photos, go here and download any template and make one yourself!

Ben and Fiona, the fine folks behind Speakerdog, are actively looking to get submission from Japanese artists, illustrators, and designers in order to release a Japan Series later this year. You can contact them directly for more details.

As part of the exhibition, I also invited Josh McKible to bring in his first series of NaniBird paper toys, and it even includes a collaboration between Josh and Ben (pictured below).

I’ve added a few more photos in the following Flickr photoset, and will add some more over the next week.

Today marks the start of Huschang and Sonia‘s Ooito and Th’ Rezidents exhibition at Cafe Pause (until December 24), and so I’ve put up a Flickr photoset of a few shots I took tonight. As the exhibition will be held in two phases — read about it here — I’ll add more photos to the set over the course of the show. Both of them will be on hand Friday night (December 15) for an informal reception.

I’ve put up a Flickr photoset of shots from “Connections and Combinations,” the exhibition by artist/writer Andrew Conti at Cafe Pause that starts today. The show runs until December 3, with an artist reception being held November 25, from 19:00.

You’ll notice some of the puzzles in the shots that I mentioned a while back, and the artist invites everyone to play around with them, and to then snap a pic and send it to him.

The Swedish Style event that I’ll be organizing this year at the cafe with Jesper is starting to come together. Nudie Cafe — a collaboration with Swedish fashion brand Nudie Jeans — will again take over the regular space during the first two weeks of November, with PMKFA creating various installations, and other surprises as well. The site for the event is now live (not much there yet, but more to come in the next few weeks). I will keep my blogging about the event mostly to the Cafe Pause blog, so keep checking there for more details as they become available.

You may more readily recognize Andrew Conti‘s name as the art writer for METROPOLIS, but he’s an artist as well, and is currently working on a series of intriguing puzzles for an upcoming exhibition at the cafe (November 20 to December 3). I like where he’s going with these.

Hiroaki Koshiba‘s exhibition, “Rhythm of the Composition,” is currently on show (until August 27). I’ve created a Flickr photoset of a few shots taken. The opening party will take place tomorrow night (Saturday, August 19), with live painting (accompanied by video projections created by Channing Kennedy) by the artist starting at 19:00. All drinks will be 500 yen. Come join us!

Update
I’ve put up a photoset of the live painting session.

This week at Cafe Pause we have an exhibition by artists Kazaho Setsu and Nikiniki called “Happy Time” (until July 30). Postcards — which you can see here and here — are sold for 150 yen.

Event info for the “It’s Our Thing” exhibition is now up on TAB. And remember to come see us during the party Saturday night (from 19:00)!

Starting today, we have an exhibition at Cafe Pause of Swedish designer PMKFA‘s new line of t-shirts, “It’s Our Thing.” All tees, as well as sweatshirts and bags, are for sale at the cafe, and we will be celebrating with a party this coming Saturday, July 1, 19:00-22:00. All drinks and snacks will be 500 yen, and expect some PMKFA visuals to be projected, so come join us! Here’s a small photoset of a few pics taken today at the cafe.

The next exhibition we have scheduled for Gallery Pause is by artist Yuri Arai, being held June 5-18. The image you see here is from the event flyer.

I haven’t talked about it here yet, but I recently was put in charge of organizing the gallery space at Cafe Pause. As manager of Gallery Pause, I’m in charge of dealing with artists, and accepting or rejecting requests for shows (as well as helping with the setup). I was waiting to put up some sort of website with all the info before talking about it, but since we’ve already got upcoming shows scheduled, I figure now is as good a time as any to mention it. I think that what we charge for the space is quite reasonable (15 000 yen for one week, 30 000 yen for two weeks, plus 5000 yen for 6000 yen worth of coupons to use at the cafe), and I think the cafe lends itself well to exhibiting, as the events I’ve produced in the past (Mamma Gun and Canadian Style) have proven.

If you are an artist/designer/photographer interested in exhibiting at the cafe, please get in touch with me, and include the following info:

• Your name and contact info
• Images of some of the work you’d like to show (or a link to a site)
• The dates you’d like to reserve
• Whether or not you would like to use the projector (which adds an extra cost of 3000 yen for one week, or 5000 yen for 2 weeks).

Shows go from Monday to Sunday, with the setup taking place on the Monday morning from 10:00, and then the clean-up Sunday evening at 22:00. If you want to sell works, a 30% commission goes to the cafe. Payment is done on the morning of the setup.

All this information can also be found in Japanese here.