I spent part of the morning on the phone, making phone calls for appointments. It always ends up with strange conversations because very often the language does not match.
I left the IH around 11am to visit Gallery Side 2. Of course I was a little bit late and in this case I always think that the best solution is to take a taxi. That's wrong. Tokyo's geography being so complex, very often the taxi drivers spend quite a long time checking the maps and the address in Japanese that people at the front desk of the IH are kind enough to write down for me.
So at 11:42am on November 24th the taxi driver still had not figured out where the gallery was. He finally made it. The show was a photo show by Hiroshi Ono who travels all over the world, takes pictures and assembles them as if they were all from the same place. In fact they are from Morocco, France, USA, Japan... But they look as a continuum. And the Titanic is the same in New York and Marrakech.
Then Junko showed me some painting by June Fujita. Abstract, colorful
and realized as a visual equivalent of electronic music. I like them and
asked for a studio visit. I did not know what I asked for. Anyway Junko,
picked up the phone at 12:33pm and arranged a meeting with the artists
on Friday 27th. We watched some Doug Aitken video--with tears in my eyes
I took a map, written by the artist, to go visit our own Yutaka Sone.
It was about 2:15pm
when I arrived.
Yutaka
smiles at 3:02pm while we are watching his race cars and Tour
de France video. Yutaka was happy and put his yellow car on the TV.
The car work is a project where cameras are rigged on model race cars
which are speeding on a circuit installed in a museum storage space.
Tour de France is a project that Yutaka has been thinking about for a long time: to have his own team in the Tour de France. The whole team on a single bicycle. A bicycle with 20 seats. Of course it is very difficult and the video of the training is quite pathetic. Everybody is falling down. But Yutaka smiles. I like him. He also showed me the beginning of his new sculpture. A marble rainforest. Very soon at David Zwirner in NY. Back in the subway at 5:22pm Back to the IH. Saw some religious billboards with fallen angels. Dropped my bags and met Georg Kochi and Kathleen at Spiral for an opening. My understanding of Spiral was it was an avant-garde place. So I kept my sneakers. But at 7:50 pm on November 24th I think I was alone wearing sneakers. It was the opening for Takonobu Kobayashi, painter and grantee from the Daimler-Chrysler Prize in Japan.
Met Sarah Miller who was sharing a drink with Georg Kochi at 7:57pm. She is the Director of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Ltd. in Australia and is working with Mark Amerika. So she might speak soon with Steve Dietz.
I also met Johnny Walker during the opening. He is a collector who organizes big parties for artists as a way to exhibit their art. I knew about him thanks to my friend Rainer Ganahl from New York. You would recognize Johnny thanks to his little red glasses.
He drove through the night and we invaded the Bathhouse at about 10:05pm. Do not misunderstand me. The Bathhouse is a very interesting nonprofit gallery located in downtown Tokyo. The artist, Masato Nakamura, was wearing a pink jacket and was a little surprised to see our gang so late at night. The gang was Kathleen, 2 friends of Johnny Walker and me. The show looks good. All about the McDonald's logotype.
Then, Johnny Walker took us to a very old traditional, popular restaurant owned by the wife of a Gutai artist. Impossible to figure out which one. Delicious and beautiful. The place cannot accommodate more than 10 persons and there is no menu. One eats what is cooked. Nice dinner, nice conversation. Johnny told us about a concept to know in Japan, the one of White Neger or White Negro. Strange...I have to think about it. In an attempt to locate the place I took a photo of what I thought was a street name. It was 11:31pm. In fact it turned out to be a dentist's sign. I wanted to be smart, I failed.
After that Johnny took Kathleen and I to the Hyatt Hotel of Tokyo. The highest, the most expensive, the most beautiful view of the city. With luxury suites that we visited. I should ask Georg Kochi why ACC did not booked a room there. A library in the dark at 12:23am.
Johnny Walker made a last face at 12:29am and we ran to catch the curfew.
Nice night, early night (1am??? whatever!) By the way, Mister Johnny
Walker will host a show next year for the Tate Gallery at his residency
space in Tokyo. Speaking of the Tate, he left for London to organize the
Turner Prize Party.