Sunday, November 30, 2008
ULTRA, day 3
10/30
After my day manning the "booth" (Alida in the green vest is standing next to Naoko Tamura's work and Violet Hopkins eyeball above!), Alida and I went to the Aosando art fair organized by another ULTRA director. It was a short walk to Aosando and was basically popping into the stores owned by or owned by friends with the hpgrp chair in Japan. It was basically a little promotional art walk set to be in conjunction with ULTRA and Tokyo Design Week.
Some things I saw along Aosando street:
The bartender at the hpgrp building. As you can tell, the overall feel was very fashion-y, because the hp group main business is high-end imported designer fashion.
The following is a picture of Wut Berlin, which I forgot to mention before all these ULTRA posts, but I'll do a follow up post today on that. Alida and I went to the opening party for Wut Berlin before this night, and it was a particularly odd feeling for her, because the original store was right in her neighborhood when she was living in the city.
Here's Wut the night of the Aosando walk:
Some new additions to the store in conjunction with Tokyo Design Week (so that they could be cross-listed on that tour.. oh boy, hpgrp sure has a thousand ways of promoting themselves!):
It's too bad that despite all the self-generated hype, the hpgrp art gallery does not speak for itself:
This little ditty had a several thousand dollar pricetag on it.. It was about the size of a sheet of paper. Even in the art world, that is overpriced for an unknown artist.
Although I did find the performance art the night before the official gallery opening much more fun and interesting:
The artist and one of his friends attached paintbrushes to the legs of little barking mechanical creatures (a dog and panda). The toys walked around, painting, as the humans poured paint onto the canvas and then over the animals. I'm not saying it was a good performance, but it was definitely a fun one. And the artist and crowd were not the sort of melodramatic jerks that take it seriously, but had a light and fun tone that should go with this sort of frivolous work.
Afterwards, Alida and I went to her German friend's going away party at an izakaya in Shibuya.
Four former Todai graduate students and a general academic vibe killed an otherwise fun drinking party, but it was nice to talk about east asian studies, as I hadn't been to a talk or lecture in a long while. We definitely came home by the last train!
After my day manning the "booth" (Alida in the green vest is standing next to Naoko Tamura's work and Violet Hopkins eyeball above!), Alida and I went to the Aosando art fair organized by another ULTRA director. It was a short walk to Aosando and was basically popping into the stores owned by or owned by friends with the hpgrp chair in Japan. It was basically a little promotional art walk set to be in conjunction with ULTRA and Tokyo Design Week.
Some things I saw along Aosando street:
The bartender at the hpgrp building. As you can tell, the overall feel was very fashion-y, because the hp group main business is high-end imported designer fashion.
The following is a picture of Wut Berlin, which I forgot to mention before all these ULTRA posts, but I'll do a follow up post today on that. Alida and I went to the opening party for Wut Berlin before this night, and it was a particularly odd feeling for her, because the original store was right in her neighborhood when she was living in the city.
Here's Wut the night of the Aosando walk:
Some new additions to the store in conjunction with Tokyo Design Week (so that they could be cross-listed on that tour.. oh boy, hpgrp sure has a thousand ways of promoting themselves!):
It's too bad that despite all the self-generated hype, the hpgrp art gallery does not speak for itself:
This little ditty had a several thousand dollar pricetag on it.. It was about the size of a sheet of paper. Even in the art world, that is overpriced for an unknown artist.
Although I did find the performance art the night before the official gallery opening much more fun and interesting:
The artist and one of his friends attached paintbrushes to the legs of little barking mechanical creatures (a dog and panda). The toys walked around, painting, as the humans poured paint onto the canvas and then over the animals. I'm not saying it was a good performance, but it was definitely a fun one. And the artist and crowd were not the sort of melodramatic jerks that take it seriously, but had a light and fun tone that should go with this sort of frivolous work.
Afterwards, Alida and I went to her German friend's going away party at an izakaya in Shibuya.
Four former Todai graduate students and a general academic vibe killed an otherwise fun drinking party, but it was nice to talk about east asian studies, as I hadn't been to a talk or lecture in a long while. We definitely came home by the last train!
Labels: aosando, omotesando, shibuya
¶ 1:40 AM
