Tokyo galleries are back in swing after the New Year's holiday, and the surprise toast of the town is an emerging artist, Anne Daems. A look at the 34-year-old Belgian's biography reveals that Daems has had only four solo shows in her short career, and that is exactly the number of local exhibitions featuring her work right now.
There are plenty of precedents for concurrent exhibitions by a single artist, and a number of advantages to holding them. Expenses are shared, exposure and media coverage are multiplied and collectors are presented with a wider range of work from an artist that everybody in the art scene ends up talking about, if only by default. What is noteworthy about this month's focus on Daems is that she is a relative unknown, and might have slipped through Tokyo unnoticed had she shown at a single gallery.
Daems is a multidisciplinary artist, and her pencil, ink and crayon drawings are now showing at Points des Suspension in Daikanyama and Gallery Side 2 in Sendagaya. The latter space also has several of her photographs. At Otsuka's Taka Ishii Gallery is a larger selection of Daems' photographs, while the Tokyo Opera City Gallery in Shinjuku has photographs, drawings and a short video from the improbably ubiquitous artist.