Category: Exhibitions

Galleries and Museums and other spaces.

DIY Osaka part 3: interview with Kazuma Sasajima, Nice Shop Su

Introduction

In the final interview for this series of posts about the DIY scene in Osaka, Japan, I spoke to Kazuma Sasajima who runs an “independent culture shop” called Nice Shop Su from his tiny apartment in the attic of an old residential building not far from Umeda (one of the major commercial districts of Osaka). Nice Shop Su was established by Kazuma and his partner Kaori Nakao in 2013, and sells many different types of artist-produced bits and bobs. One thing that interested me about Nice Shop Su was that Kazuma deliberately chose to locate it in an area without a strong art community. This approach provides a contrast with the development of the community of artists in Baika, which was discussed in the first two interviews in this series (with Go Tsushima and Kaori Yoshikawa). For this interview Kazuma and I were joined by Kazuma’s friend, the graphic designer Daisuke Minami, and the artist Makiko Yamamoto, who acted as guide and translator for my visit and to whom I am hugely grateful.

Previous interviews in this series:

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DIY Osaka part 2: interview with Kaori Yoshikawa, Noooooooooooo Kitty

Introduction

For the second part of this three part series of posts touching on DIY/alternative cultural practices in Osaka, Japan, I spoke to artist Kaori Yoshikawa who set up Noooooooooooo Kitty last year with her teammate Snoo. Noooooooooooo Kitty is an artist-run gallery and events space that they opened following the closure of their previous space, named Bar Kitty. The latter was located in the suburbs south of Osaka, while Noooooooooooo Kitty is located in the Baika area in the west (around the corner from Go Tsushima’s home/studio, who I interviewed in the first part of this series). Over the past few years Baika and its surroundings have become popular for artists and musicians, and a number of small galleries and live venues are also located there. In this way a certain informal cultural community appears to have developed in this area, which Noooooooooooo Kitty is now part of and benefits from in various ways. In this interview Kaori goes into detail about their motivations for the move to Baika, and how Snoo and her artistic practices are reflected in their plans for Noooooooooooo Kitty.

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Frieze website: Liu Wei at White Cube

Liu Wei

White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London

Liu Wei rose to prominence in China in the early 2000s with a diverse practice encompassing painting, photography and sculpture, often presented with a touch of humour. His solo show at White Cube focused on recent sculpture and installation pieces that demonstrated the artists professed move away from figuration but which, in the process, seemed to lose some of the agility that characterised the artist’s earlier practice.

Liu presented works from three distinct series that were organised over the two floors of the gallery. Dominating the basement gallery floor stood six geometric sculptures (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, from the ‘Density’ series, 2013) – including a cube, a ball, and other less specific shapes, the larger pieces looming over the visitor. These works used layers of cut books to form their off-white surfaces; the Chinese characters printed on the books’ pages still visible along the cut edges. This paper lent a material softness to the sculptures that contrast with the hard-edged, abstract shapes they formed.

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ArtReview Asia: Xu Tan – Questions, Soil and ‘Socio-Botanic’

Xu Tan: Questions, Soil and ‘Socio-Botanic’

Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou

19 August – 22 November

Displaying a long-term commitment to his practice, most visible for the last six years in the ongoing Keywords Project, Guangzhou-based Xu Tan chooses to address both the detail as well as the ‘bigger picture’ of cultural and social change through his works. His current solo show in Guangzhou’s Vitamin Creative Space, titled Questions, Soil and ‘Socio-Botanic,’ shifts the subject matter from language—as demonstrated by Keywords—to issues of the conceptual and legal construction of the social landscape.

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