http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2010/12/a-human-architecture.html

The 25th Anniversary Exhibition of Toto Gallery MA

In a globalised world mediated by mass communication, controlled by pre-existing aesthetic conditions of appropriation and irony, a world dictated by repetition yet unpredictable in its future, the role of the architect seems increasingly arbitrary. This raises some compelling questions for those interested in architecture. As an architect, how does one use the formal devices of space, materials, structure and consider the brief, whilst grappling with the complexities of time and place at the fragile beginnings of the twenty-first century?

The 25th Anniversary Exhibition of Toto Gallery MA – “Global Ends: Towards the Beginning” – is an ambitious project showcasing seven architects from across the globe together with a commemorative symposium held at the Architectural Institute of Japan, that seeks to address these crucial issues of architecture today.

Sean Godsell, 'Horizon'

© Nacása & Partners Inc.

reviews , main article 3

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2010/12/in-pursuit-of-less.html

There is something quite confounding about Shinya Aota’s first exhibition at Aoyama | Meguro, with the installation and indeed the individual works constructing a simultaneous process of familiarisation and defamiliarisation. Upon approaching the gallery, with its vast street frontage windows, the site could initially be read as a minimalist boutique for designer objects. Swathed in fluorescent lighting the individual works are formally arranged at an almost architectural equidistance from one another, connoting the impression of discriminative availability.

Shinya Aota

Courtesy of Aoyama Meguro

Yet the works reveal themselves to be an almost banal assortment of everyday objects, with among other items, a baseball bat, a pair of spectacles, a football, a globe, and various vessels that had perhaps contained domestic cleaning products. This is not a Duchampian gesture of inserting the readymade within the gallery context, for the works are not merely found objects recontextualised to raise questions of aesthetic and institutional evaluation. All of the items within the project have been neutered in terms of their origin and in some instances, their functionality, with all traces of their surfaces removed beyond recognition. The works have undergone what would appear to be painstaking process of sanding back, erasing all trace of brand identification while retaining the sense of the form, as an almost Platonian gesture of idealism.

Shinya Aota

Courtesy of Aoyama Meguro

main article 1 , reviews , Japan , exhibitions

http://www.neural.it/art/2010/09/another_soundscapes_cable_car.phtml

Sound installations frequently dispense with linear musical time by means of spatial arrangements. In the work “another soundscape” by Chung-Kun Wang, linear time is reintroduced and represented spatially following the model of western musical notation. Exhibited at the Digital Art Center di Taipei, what the

sound art

http://www.vvork.com/?p=19635

»Paris Syndrome«, 2007 by Jun Yang.

male , vienna , photography , 2007 , adaption , culture , representation

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1903&Itemid=99999999

Mel Kadel & Travis Millard were also invited to speak at Semi Permanent in Sydney a couple weeks back. They blog up the conference and their time there.

blogs , guest

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/event/2009/4592

"Visual Deception" Exhibition
at Bunkamura Museum of Art
Media: Painting
(2009-06-13 - 2009-08-16)

Trompe-l’oeil painting boasts a long history in Western art. In antiquity, already, skillful artists did their best to depict on a flat surface of a painting the three-dimensional contours of an object with such verisimilitude that the viewer mistook the painting for the real thing. Of course, the challenge lay in painting the illusion of something that was not really there, but instead of stopping at mere whimsy, trompe-l’oeil painting underwent multiple developments. Often, it expressed the painter’s most profound beliefs, and sometimes it made use of the latest scientific research in the fields of optics and perspective. This exhibition brings together paintings ranging from classic works of the 16th and 17th centuries to modern masters like Dali and Magritte, but it also contains witty examples by Japanese artists. Now as in the past, people have always been fascinated by trompe-l’oeil. After seeing this exhibition, you will understand why. [Image: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Vertumnus/Rudolf II" (ca. 1590), oil on wood, Skokloster Castle, Sweden]

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2009/08/art-tripping.html

A new exhibition is a feast for the senses.

main article 1 , reviews

http://www.culturetv.tv/?p=2313

Short film for Onedreamrush Music:Simon Pyke

video , short movie , maxim zhestkov

http://artforum.com/picks/section%3Dla#picks23321

06.28.09-09.20.09 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, review written by Sharon Mizota

picks

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/event/2009/609E

Nobuyoshi Araki "Polart"
at Rat Hole Gallery
Media: Photography
(2009-07-17 - 2009-08-16)

5000 polaroid photographs, production of which was discontinued last summer, will be on display. A photo book containing the photographs on display will also be on sale.