Andrew Maerkle - The Japan Times

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Andrew Maerkle

For Andrew Maerkle's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 25, 2009

On the pleasure of self-deception

William Kentridge is known for his hand-drawn animations that evoke the quaint charms of the silent film era while unflinchingly observing the brutality of contemporary society, with many of his works drawing from the context of his native South Africa.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 11, 2009

Hiroshima city tracks down elusive artist

Upon entering his current exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), it is clear that although what he does can be described as making art, Tsuyoshi Ozawa is not an artist.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 28, 2009

Dipping into modern art at Naoshima's bathhouse

At 2 p.m. on July 26, operations commenced at the first public bathhouse on the island of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea between the mainland of Honshu and Shikoku. Titled Naoshima Bathhouse "I Love Yu" (the "Love" represented by a heart symbol and "Yu" in kanji form) and designed by artist Shinro Ohtake in collaboration with the creative unit graf, the bathhouse is the latest addition to a growing collection of art treasures commissioned for Naoshima by Soichiro Fukutake, president of the Benesse Corporation based in nearby Okayama on the mainland.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 10, 2009

Artist Yoko Ono is honored

On June 6, the Venice Biennale presented artist Yoko Ono with one of its most prestigious honors, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Ono was nominated for the distinction along with American John Baldessari by the director of this year's biennale, Daniel Birnbaum.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 10, 2009

Gutai installation a winner in Venice

Yoko Ono is not the only historically significant Japanese artist included in biennale director Daniel Birnbaum's exhibition, "Making Worlds." In the newly renamed Palazzo delle Espozioni in the Giardini, Birnbaum has dedicated a room to works by members of the post World War II avant-garde Gutai Art Association founded in 1954 in Ashiya City in western Japan.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 3, 2009

ART iT transforms into digital forum

When Tokyo-based quarterly magazine ART iT announced the discontinuation of its print edition and that all content would move online following the publishing of its June 2009 issue, it seemed like yet another example of how the popularity of the Internet had combined with a global economic recession to shut down a once-promising media company.

CULTURE / Art

Jun 19, 2009

Miwa Yanagi makes the personal public

Born in 1967, Kyoto-based photographer Miwa Yanagi burst onto the Japanese art scene in 1994 with "Elevator Girl" (1994-98), her photo series depicting groups of uniformed women languidly posing in empty shopping arcades. Since then, much of her work has reflected a theatrical aesthetic. For "My Grandmothers" (2000-09), Yanagi asked young women to imagine their lives 50 years in the future and then used elaborate sets and makeup to realize those visions. The black-and-white series "Fairy Tale" (2004-06) restaged scenes from folk stories such as Cinderella and Snow White with a macabre twist, highlighting the cannibalistic tension between the old witch and budding beauty archetypes that recur in such narratives.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 19, 2009

Collectors pleased with Art 40 Basel fair

The consensus among the 61,000- odd dealers, collectors, museum curators, media and art lovers who descended on the Swiss town of Basel for the 40th edition of the annual Art Basel fair on June 10-14 is that the art market is surprisingly healthy despite a global economic recession.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital

Jun 3, 2009

Creative Commons fights for new copyright

On April 17, the district court of Stockholm issued its verdict in the copyright infringement case of the torrent tracking Web site The Pirate Bay, whose managers and another associate were accused of facilitating the illegal downloading of music, movie and video-game files. The four defendants were found guilty of accessory to crime against copyright law and sentenced to one year in prison each and a fine of 30 million kronor (equivalent to about ¥360 million on that date).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF

May 1, 2009

Ruud van Empel: 'Dawn, Moon, World'

Gallery Terra Tokyo, Kamiyacho

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF

May 1, 2009

Stephen G. Rhodes: 'There is No Bear Bear Ladder'

Misako & Rosen Gallery, Kita-Otsuka (near Ikebukuro)

CULTURE / Art

Apr 3, 2009

Going postcolonial, seeking 'altermodern'

Born in Calabar, Nigeria, in 1963 and now dean of academic affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, Okwui Enwezor has organized a number of seminal exhibitions of contemporary art. In 2001, the internationally touring exhibition "The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994" presented a complex view of African modernism, and in 2002 Enwezor oversaw one of the world's most prestigious periodic art surveys, Documenta, in Kassel, Germany. Invited by the Mori Art Museum's MAM Art Course lecture series, he came to Tokyo to give a presentation on another recent exhibition he organized, 2008's "Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art" at the International Center of Photography in New York. The Japan Times sat down with Enwezor after his lecture to discuss his career and the state of contemporary art and curatorial practice.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 13, 2009

Fans of GEISAI enjoy the opportunities

Held on Sunday, March 8, at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center, GEISAI #12 marked the latest installment of the ongoing series of open-application, competitive one-day festivals organized since 2001 by pop artist and cultural promoter Takashi Murakami. Part exhibition, flea market and spectacle, punctuated by live music acts and special-effects smoke, GEISAI has helped launch the careers of a number of artists — particularly those who have gone on to join Murakami's own stable of artists, Kaikai Kiki — and provides recognition for winners of prizes selected by a celebrity jury panel.

MULTIMEDIA

Mar 13, 2009

Fans of GEISAI enjoy the opportunities

Held on Sunday, March 8, at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center, GEISAI #12 marked the latest installment of the ongoing series of open-application, competitive one-day festivals organized since 2001 by pop artist and cultural promoter Takashi Murakami. Part exhibition, flea market and spectacle, punctuated by live music acts and special-effects smoke, GEISAI has helped launch the careers of a number of artists — particularly those who have gone on to join Murakami's own stable of artists, Kaikai Kiki — and provides recognition for winners of prizes selected by a celebrity jury panel.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 30, 2009

Art Basel codirector sees positive changes

Since its inception in 1970, Art Basel has become one of the world's most prestigious art events. Held every June in Basel, Switzerland, the commercial fair hosts almost 300 galleries dealing in blue-chip Modern and postwar art as well as those with cutting-edge contemporary art.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 9, 2008

Narcissism on the march for beauty

If there is any doubt that New York-based artist Terence Koh has perfected the art of winsome provocateurship, it was put to rest upon reaching the terrace of his Shibuya penthouse hotel room, where a plastic, spermatoza-shaped chalice, filled with milky white liquid, lay innocuously on the artist's deck table. Metal wiring threaded through the white, smiley-face cap of the chalice connected the object to a string of pearl beads. Koh barely gave it a second glance as he busied himself with preparations to leave for Yokohama, where he is included in the Yokohama Triennale 2008, "Time Crevasse."

CULTURE / Art

Sep 18, 2008

Yokohama Triennale curators puzzle locals

In its short history, the Yokohama Triennale has had its ups and downs. The critical and popular success of the first edition of this international art showcase in 2001 was squandered in 2005 when that year's director, architect Arata Isozaki, resigned after six months on the job. His successor, artist Tadashi Kawamata, had less than a year to prepare the event, already out of sync with the three-year cycle in its title.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 4, 2008

Historical turn at Sydney biennale

The opening of the 16th Biennale of Sydney in June arrived on the heels of a national controversy in Australia, after police had removed works from an exhibition of renowned photographer Bill Henson in late May. Police deemed Henson's photographs of naked adolescent children to be indecent, although criminal charges were eventually dropped.

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[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces

By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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