4 Galleries to Watch in Tokyo

Dossier: A new generation of galleries, non-profits and artist-run spaces has emerged in Tokyo, embracing the city’s famous pop sensibility – and revitalizing one of Asia’s oldest and most storied contemporary art sceneswith commissioned

- Andrew Maerkle, Azby Brown, Andrew Durbin,Taro Nettleton

WHEN TAKAYUKI KUBOTA, the artist who runs the alternative space Fig., tells me that he’s seeking to build an exhibition making practice that stops short of professionalism, I check myself. He’s speaking to me on Zoom after a long day of work and the words are delivered a bit awkwardly, but my confusion also has to do with the nature of the Japanese language, which tends to unfold over a series of deferrals that invite an anxious listener to leap to conclusions before the speaker has completed their statement. Since I know Kubota studied at Hunter College in New York before returning to Japan in 2016, the word ‘professionalism’ triggers associations with the old trope of the artist who comes back from overseas with a mission to preach the international standard to everyone back home. That’s not what he’s talking about, is it? No, Kubota clarifies. He’s experimenting with the possibilities of a space that refuses expansion and institutionalization.

Kubota’s stance is emblematic of a turn in recent Japanese thought towards ‘degrowth’, as championed by bestselling Marxist philosopher Kohei Saito in Capital in the Anthropocene (2020). Founded in 2017, Fig. is an intimate operation. Kubota does everything by himself, from installation to administration, while maintaining his own artist practice and teaching art at Temple University, Japan Campus, where he earned his undergraduate degree. Wary of the grant-writing treadmill, he funds Fig. mainly through sales of the artworks he exhibits, supplemented by his own modest income. Until recently, he also lived in the space, which occupies a glorified trunk room wedged between the commercial gallery Misako & Rosen and the family home of art dealer Taka Ishii in Tree-ness House, a multistorey complex in the Otsuka neighborhood.