Yukako Yamashita delivered on her promise of a more relaxed, digestible art fair. Yukako Yamashita of Art Collaboration Kyoto (ACK) said she hoped collectors wouldn’t feel ‘too full’ with art when the fair opened to VIPs.
The event was limited to 64 galleries, less than a quarter of the 282 that will attend Art Basel Miami Beach next month. It only had 35 booths, most of which were shared by a Japanese host gallery and an international collaborator. Some galleries found their partners by sharing an artist’s representation.
Kavi Gupta (Chicago) and Kotaro Nukaga (Tokyo), for instance, split their works on either side of a dreamy Tomokazu Matsuyama painting. At the same time, Denny Dimin (New York) and Koki Arts (Tokyo) divided around Amanda Valdez.
For other pairings, we have Canada (New York) with Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo), and Shibunkaku (Kyoto) with Nonaka-Hill (Los Angeles).
Yamashita said, “I did matchmaking.” The Hole (New York) and Nanzuka Underground shared the booth that best embodied the fair’s collaborative spirit (Tokyo). Their works, which included Joakim Ojanen’s ugly-cute paintings and stoneware and Ryuichi Ohira’s two-meter-tall hot pink cherries made of camphor wood, were interspersed but kept coherent thanks to a shared aesthetic that Julien Pomerleau, Director of Operations at The Hole, described as ‘pop’ and ‘joy.’
The booth design and layout by architect Takashi Suo also contributed to the fair’s intimacy. Rather than cramming works onto interior and exterior walls, they were contained within tall wooden walls resembling shipping crates waiting to be unpacked. These formed a network of narrow alleyways meant to resemble Kyoto’s streets.
This created a negative space between booths, which sound artist Miyu Hosoi used greatly in the fair’s public programme. The frantic pace of an art fair is hostile to durational works. Still, Hosoi’s ethereal sound, composed of 60 layers of her voice, was played on speakers running either side of an alleyway, allowing visitors to take it in a while navigating the fair.
Jam Acuzar, who recently moved to Tokyo from the Philippines, curated the public programme.
Takashi Hinoda’s Stink (2002), a ceramic work sculpted and painted to look like polyurethane foam, and Tromarama’s Patgulipat (2022), an upside-down bouncy castle surrounded by hanging construction helmets with a sound element triggered by Twitter activity, were also highlights of her show. Patgulipat is frustrated by the blurring of professional and personal life—work and play—on social media.
The fair’s emphasis on slowing down and cultivating mindfulness was most visible in the exhibition Flowers of Time, curated by Yamashita and held at Hongwanji Dendoin, a red brick building topped with a mosque-like dome in the early Taisho period (1912–1926).
There, Lee Mingwei’s 100 Days With Lily (1995) documents the artist’s efforts to honor his deceased grandmother by doing everything with her favorite flower (eating, shitting, showering, etc.).
Visitors to the Center Empty are encouraged to touch the incense rather than smell it, to hear artworks rather than see them, and to embrace ‘mu,’ which means nothing, emptiness, or without.
The goal is to dissolve the distinction between the self and others, as well as between the self and nature, in the same way that ACK removes walls between galleries.
The timing of the fair is also important in this regard. The main event lasted four days, beginning with a VIP day on November 17, when the fall leaves are changing—maples turning orange and red, ginkgos juggling lemons and limes.
Art Collaboration Kyoto operates at different time scales—business time, botanical time, and generational time—befitting an ancient capital staking its claim in the contemporary art market.
