Tokyo Gendai 2023: Fair Highlights

Tokyo Gendai was conceived by The Art Assembly, who run fairs across the Asia Pacific including Taipei Dangdai, Sydney Contemporary, and Art SG. The fair’s first edition brings together a sterling roster of leading contemporary art galleries the region and beyond.

Spanning presentations from 74 galleries, the fair takes place at the Pacifico Yokohama convention centre just outside Tokyo from 6 to 9 July 2023. On this occasion, Ocula Advisory shares artwork highlights from the fair.

At Gajah Gallery, Yunizar‘s paintings are a jubilant expression of figurative language. The Indonesian artist captures his subjects with playful energy and a sense of innocence, as noted in Putri Duyung dan Ikan Merah (Mermaid & Red Fish) (2023), a doodle-like drawing of a mermaid in a brilliant palette that suggests warmth and playfulness.

At KOSAKU KANECHIKA, Noritaka Tatehana‘s three-dimensional ‘Descending Painting’ series (2019–2022) fuses contemporary culture with traditional Japanese beliefs. In Descending Painting (2021), two blue cartoon-like clouds are layered to form one whole cloud with a black lightning bolt striking through the centre—a motif Tatehana has observed from his study of Shintoism and Buddhism, Japan’s two major religions.

We love Dan McCarthy‘s jolly ceramic sculptures at KOSAKU KANECHIKA. Lidded Fruit Sticker Facepot, Pepito (2018) is a leaning pot donning a golden smiling face with fruit stickers peppered across its surface. The playful face gives the ‘art object’ an emotional charge, while its hammered surface emphasises the sculpture’s tactility.

Over at Almine Rech is a presentation of artists united in their treatment of vivid colour in both figurative and abstract painting. Tom Wesselmann‘s oil painting of a black bra tangled around green shoes encapsulates the artist’s sumptuous handling of colours and surfaces. While Vivian Springford‘s radiant, colour-stained orbs celebrate the American artist’s dedication to contemplative mark-making.

Finally, Fox Jensen, Sydney and Fox Jensen McCrory, Auckland present work by Israeli painter Gideon Rubin, whose subdued palette and faceless figures imbue a curiosity in viewers with paintings that feel at once voyeuristic and familiar.

Main image: Yunizar, Putri Duyung dan Ikan Merah (Mermaid & Red Fish) (2023) (detail). Acrylic on Canvas. 100 x 100 cm. © Yunizar. Courtesy Gajah Gallery, Singapore.