Founded in March 2017 by director, Kosaku Kanechika, KOSAKU KANECHIKA is a contemporary art gallery in Tokyo, Japan, that belongs to a new generation of venues re-defining the local contemporary art landscape. The gallery showcases Japanese artists who are renowned domestically and on an international scale, representing Yutaka Aoki, Junko Oki, Takuro Kuwata, Ataru Sato, Chikashi Suzuki, Noritaka Tatehana, and fumiko imano. The gallery also hosts exhibitions featuring overseas artists such as Dan McCarthy and Ruby Neri, introducing artists that engage in novel expressions transcending both medium and genre.
Read MoreKOSAKU KANECHIKA Artists
KOSAKU KANECHIKA’s roster consists of Japanese artists whose innovative practices often combine tradition and modernity. This is apparent in Junko Oki’s textile sculptures, which, rejecting the rigid structure of traditional Japanese embroidery, directly stitch patterns often revolving around such motifs as the moon and chrysalises onto cloth; Takuro Kuwata’s ceramic sculptures, which draw from traditional techniques and the aesthetic of wabi-sabi, or imperfect beauty; and Noritaka Tatehana’s internationally renowned footwear, which is crafted by hand and reimagines shoes with the raised platforms worn by Japanese courtesans of the past.
Painters include Yutaka Aoki, whose highly textured, usually monochromatic canvases explore the three-dimensional quality of light, and Ataru Sato, who creates hypnotic drawings and paintings that probe the conflicted sentiments of obsession and romance.
KOSAKU KANECHIKA Exhibitions and Art Fairs
KOSAKU KANECHIKA’s notable exhibitions include Mirror of Fashion (2018). Devised in collaboration with Tokyo’s Naruyama Gallery, the group show brought together the works of Charles Eisenman, Cecil Beaton, Robert Doisneau, Alexander Rodchenko, and Chikashi Suzuki, among others, on the theme of the fashion portrait.
KOSAKU KANECHIKA has also exhibited the work of renowned photographers such as Chikashi Suzuki, a leading fashion photographer who has been collapsing the boundary between fashion and art since the 1990s, and fumiko imano, who is known for her quirky photomontages featuring herself.
Gaining a reputation both nationally and internationally, KOSAKU KANECHIKA’s artists have gone on to exhibit their works at numerous institutions and art fairs, from the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; to the Gwangju Biennale and Taipei Dangdai.
