Tokyo Gendai Best Booths 2025

The very first thing that caught my eye was a pitch-black department exhibited by Ingleby Gallery of Edinburgh. At first, I puzzled why there was a department in any respect—however up shut, its floor revealed a tough, black coating. It had been coated within the ash of over 10,000 totally different tree species.

Scottish artist Katie Paterson makes an attempt to condense the vastness of Earth’s pure historical past right into a single object. Her work attracts on grand scientific themes—geology, time, the universe—translated via poetic sensibility and meticulous analysis. On this piece, one department turns into sufficient to move the viewer from the factitious context of Pacifico Yokohama to the deep time of the pure world. —Asuka Kawanabe

CON_, a younger Tokyo gallery that turned heads at Frieze Seoul final week, is displaying a solo presentation by Korean painter Minhee Kim. On view are three large-scale works from her Jakarta residency, together with a brand new collection produced at Artwork Omi in New York.

Since her debut, Kim has depicted the feminine determine via the lens of ’90s cyberpunk and techno-orientalism. Her early works featured character-like symbols, however newer items discover how the wonder and violence embedded in pictures of ladies formed by modern media.

The picture of ladies with a cyborg-like synthetic magnificence is born from needs created in trendy cultures resembling Okay-POP and social media, and the best way the feminine type modifications in a viscous manner offers a way of the distortion of such needs. And because the artist herself has mentioned that she additionally has a want for such our bodies inside herself, what she portrays is probably going each a fetishized picture of recent ladies and a self-portrait —Shunta Ishigami

On the Vancouver-based Unit17 sales space, a piece by Douglas Watt hangs on a wall coated in masking tape. Born in 1990, Watt works on the unceded Indigenous territories of the Musukliam, Sukwamish, and Tsleil-Wautu peoples in British Columbia and usually contributes to curatorial initiatives throughout Canada.

His miniature items are constructed from acquainted on a regular basis supplies—cardboard, staples, sponges, popsicle sticks—and drawn from locations he usually visits. They quietly re-describe a world always increasing with data.

Throughout the sales space, an set up made for the “Sato ‘Meadow’” part exhibits one thing new: a large-scale piece depicting the diving apply space of an area swimming pool. It’s an uncommon transfer for an artist usually working at miniature or life-size scale.—Kiyoshi Sato

Born in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, in 1972, Aya Fujioka is displaying three works from her River Flows collection, which received the forty third Kimura Ihei Pictures Award. Utilizing the seven rivers of Hiroshima as a motif, the collection metaphorically traces the historical past, reminiscence, and lingering presence of the atomic bomb.

The collection’ seemingly cheerful or serene scenes of every day life masks sharp, forceful questions. One picture exhibits highschool women taking part in with an atomic bomb dome within the background; one other captures elementary faculty college students in pink caps gazing in the identical course (what are they ?), as birds fly overhead. With an strategy fairly totally different from that of Ken Domon, Fujioka exposes the Hiroshima that quietly underlies on a regular basis life. Encountering these works once more this 12 months—marking the eightieth anniversary of the atomic bombing—reinforces their significance.

Within the photobook accompanying the collection, Fujioka writes: “The river flows like blood. Blood flows like a river.” —Maya Nago

On the sales space of Busan-based Johyun Gallery, a bronze sculpture modeled after charcoal exudes a hanging presence. The artist, Lee Bae, born in 1956, has been utilizing charcoal as his major motif since shifting to France in 1989.

Lee has mentioned that “charcoal harbors an influence past human management,” and associates it with ideas resembling “life and loss of life” and “circulation.” Along with the bronze sculpture, the gallery is displaying his Brushstroke collection, which furthers his exploration of charcoal. Starting with burned uncooked wooden, Lee layers his brushstrokes to seize the second when materials vitality and human gesture intersect.

Additionally featured on the sales space is an set up by Kim Taek-sang titled Second, proven within the “Sato ‘Meadow’” part. —Naoya Raita

Decide up the cellphone, dial a quantity, and listen to a poem learn aloud. Dial-A-Poem is an interactive undertaking launched by poet John Giorno in 1968, and is now considered one of MoMA’s hottest works.

The piece is deeply political. Impressed by actions such because the anti–Vietnam Conflict protests, it consists of works by radical poets and activists. Due to its content material, it may be troublesome to exhibit in nations with strict censorship. Its inclusion at Tokyo Gendai is subsequently price celebrating. —Asuka Kawanabe

Gana Artwork, with places in Seoul and Los Angeles, is displaying works by Berlin-based artist Andrew Moncrief, identified for exploring themes resembling queer identification, masculinity, and the idealized physique. His sales space consists of work of fragmented figures.

One recurring motif is a hand holding a cigarette, mentioned to be impressed by Philip Guston. For Moncrief, the hand symbolizes incomplete identities and the fragmented sensory experiences of latest life. As we speak, we interface with society largely via our palms—texting, scrolling, typing, smoking—and we’re additionally tethered to it via them.

Moncrief’s drawing of a hand rubbing a cigarette towards the bottom, as if drawing a line, reads as an try—regardless of ache—to disconnect from the addictive pull of recent life. —Shunta Ishigami

Taking part in Tokyo Gendai for the primary time, Copenhagen’s Formation Gallery is presenting new works by Danish artist Carl Krull. Lots of the items had been made throughout a current residency in Japan, and this present marks his first exhibition in Asia.

Krull’s “Seismic” drawing method creates layers of paint, forming topographic compositions from which figures appear to emerge, as if detected by sonar. Although made with paint, the works have a sculptural presence, their varieties showing to rise from beneath the floor.

Throughout from the sales space, Krull can also be presenting Vertex, a dwell drawing efficiency impressed by calligraphy, as a part of “Sato ‘Meadow.’” One piece is created every day, for a complete of 4. —Nimisha Anand

Among the many artists featured at Taka Ishii Gallery, which was described by Kohei Yamada and others as displaying “comparatively younger artists,” one work stood out: a big summary portray by Takumi Ogami, born in 2000 and a current graduate of Kyoto College of the Arts.

Titled Untitled (2025), the portray options highly effective contrasts between deep pink, yellow, and black strokes that evoke a way of painful wrestle. For Ogami, portray is a apply of testing the boundaries between his personal physique and the exterior world—a course of he describes as “intimidation.”

Upon nearer inspection, the floor reveals a collage of rounded scans of stones collected by the artist, subtly disrupting the concord of the composition. —Maya Nago

Two works by Tschabalala Self at Galerie Eva Presenhuber—Examine of Odalisque beneath Shrub and Examine of Odalisque in Panorama—stood out for his or her vibrant colours and layered materials. Heat tones of pink and orange lend the canvases a way of embrace, at the same time as they confront viewers with the existence of an insurmountable divide.

Born in Harlem in 1990, Self works throughout portray, printmaking, and sculpture to look at Black feminine identification and physicality. Recurring options—braided hair, manicured nails, distinguished buttocks—seem not as stereotypes. As a substitute, the photographs reconstruct them, critically questioning the picture of black ladies.

Self’s tackle the classical odalisque responds to centuries of subordination of the feminine type to the white male gaze. By centering the Black feminine determine, she returns energy to the marginalized topic, presenting want and oppression with new depth. —Naoya Raita