INDEX
Historical Contextualization and Crossing Different Genres
ーMatsushita was navigating the viewing tour at the venue, and there were works by Akira Subaru, a painter who painted the landscape of the hard-to-return zone in Fukushima, in the PARCEL booth, and a booth by Gallery Trax, a space in Yamanashi, and many other booths, not only in Tokyo but in various other areas. Artists and galleries from various areas as well as Tokyo were introduced, weren’t they?
Matsushita: An important context for me is the perspective of viewing galleries that are close to the community that have emerged from within the city since the Great East Japan Earthquake as historical. Many of the galleries that emerged after the earthquake functioned more as places for communication than as commercial spaces. I invited many galleries with such individuality, including spaces I had not known about until I did my research. For example, GALLERY SOAP in Kitakyushu is an artist-run space that has been active since the 1990s. I wanted to show the contemporary situation based on that history, not just the values of our own generation. In that sense, I think we were able to show the history of contemporary art, which is different from what you can see at other art fairs.
ー You were conscious of not only the spaces that are currently popular, but also the historical linkages from the 1990s and the post-earthquake period, weren’t you? On the other hand, even from the perspective of the present, the fair was not limited to art, but crossed over into a variety of other genres, such as kitchens serving food and drink, sound performances, and so on.
Matsushita: After all, since the 1990s, galleries as a community did not emerge only from within the art world. Nowadays, it is commonplace to approach art from the outside, to the extent that fashion brands all have their own galleries. I have been influenced by such outside sensibilities, even though they are sometimes ignored within the authoritative framework of art. That is why the director team is made up of people who are not originally from the art field.
ー The venue was a mix of people from various genres, and both the players and the audience were gathered together in a rush.
Takeda: Of course, numbers are not everything, but we had about 10,000 visitors, and the response was very positive.
Kurotaki: I also felt that “EASTEAST_TOKYO2023” has a good chance of becoming one of the models for future fairs, because the atmosphere was completely different from what I usually see at art fairs.
