A booze cruise for contemporary art
Get on the bus for beer and art in perfect harmony.Beer and Art. How could you go wrong?
For the past three years in Tokyo, the end of October has meant one thing in the city’s art world, and it’s not Halloween.
The Kunst Oktoberfest is an art celebrating encompassing 23 art galleries, two art fairs, a couple of buses and a bunch of free craft beer from the Coedo microbrewery in Saitama.
Drink and ride
With its focal point in Ginza, the bus route goes north to the Tokyo districts of Bakuracho and Nihombashi and south to Kayabacho and Tsukiji.
The galleries on this tour are amongst Tokyo's finest that are here year in, year out -- so you can expect to see some of the best vetted art in the city.
Unfortunately, information on the fest is somewhat lacking online so we've visited six of the best stop-offs on the route.
To join, start at any of the galleries participating and grab a map of all the locations participating in the event.
While you can jump on the bus to make the rounds, many of the galleries are in walking distance, and a bike would be a great second option to see them (depending on your drinking plans).
Six of the best:
Taro Nasu
This stylish gallery originally from Osaka plays with the big boys overseas, attending Volta in Basel, Switzerland and Paris Photo. Taro Nasu will be showing works by Taiji Matsue, the Japanese photographer who takes birds-eye view shots of cities and landscapes. www.taronasugallery.com
Radi-um von Rontgenwerke AG
This long running gallery operated by Tsutomu Ikeuchi specializes in art that celebrates or modernizes traditional Japanese craft style work with a contemporary spirit. Radium will be presenting artist Yusuke Ishikawa’s geometrical trompe l’oeil in the gallery’s great old little two story building. www.roentgenwerke.com
Cashi
Right next door to Radium, Cashi is one of the youngest galleries on the rounds, and shows a crop of young messy artists that aren’t afraid to be sentimental, provocative and/or whatever the hell they like. The gallery is putting on a group exhibition that will include the always raw Yugo Kohrogi. http://cashi.jp
nca mostly focuses on Western artists, introducing up-and-coming heavy hitters from abroad such as Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry, Clare Langan and Vik Muniz (who isn’t really up-and-coming, he’s already there). For Oktoberfest, nca will be showing new works by Muniz that re-interpret Japanese woodblock prints – if anyone else was doing this, I’d say stay away from such neo-Japonism -- but the Brazilian artist is trying it out as part of his “Pictures of Pigment” series, a great way to take a new look at old masterpieces. www.nca-g.com
Wada Fine Arts
The always idiosyncratic Wada will be showing a certain-to-be perplexing exhibition of works by Alice Wang that look to bring art into the office and vice-versa. www.wadafinearts.com
Gallery Hashimoto
Hashimoto, which shows an equally eclectic range of excellent contemporary art, always offers something new -- even when its old. For this year’s tour, the gallery is presenting works by the late Ueda Shoji, a photographer famous for his shots of average folks in the sand dunes of Japan’s Tottori Prefecture, that have all been held in the possession of a single collector until now. www.space355.jp
Besides these exhibition spaces, there will also be the Young Artist Japan Fair at the Tokyo Kaigan Building floor by Yurakucho station, a collection of artist’s booths that range from the undiscovered to the uninspired and the Ultra art fair (Oct. 28-30 & Nov. 1-3, 11:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.), which, unless you are gorged on art after the bus tour, you should not miss as 60 directors from different galleries will each present a wall of artworks at Spiral in Ometesando.
Have a Halloween engagement later? Don’t worry.
If you are in the mood, you could put your Halloween costume on early and get out to see the exhibitions: We’re talking contemporary art here, so you could just pretend that you are perfecting your socially-interactive interpretive dance performance that explores the nature of disguises in cross-cultural situations -- or, you know, something like that -- and people might not even notice.
Date: October 30, 2010 (Sat), 12:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
After party: 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at Yaesu Fujiya Hotel, admission ¥3,500 (with foods and drinks)
