It is always a pleasure to spotlight an exhibition that seems to have slipped in under the art radar, as is the case with the group show "Quobo -- Art in Berlin 1989-1999" now at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
Only a small slice of the usual Tokyo art schmoozers showed up at the opening last weekend -- maybe because there were good parties elsewhere, maybe because last month MoT brought out everyone and their sister to the reception for its splashy Tadanori Yokoo retrospective (which is still running, upstairs from the "Quobo" show).
But "Quobo" (a neologism coined by Adib Frike, one of the participating artists) is remarkable, in large part because it documents art made by remarkable people working in a remarkable place and time -- Berlin in the decade between the fall of the Wall and the eve of the 21st century. Today, German art is flourishing (saleswise it ranks second only to that coming out of the United States) largely due to the atmosphere of unbridled creative energy born in Berlin in the 1990s.