Misa Shin Gallery Opens

Shirokane gets a new art space, courtesy of the former director of Art Fair Tokyo.

William Andrews

Misa Shin Gallery is on the same street as the building housing Yamamoto Gendai, Nanzuka Underground and Kodama Gallery.

The first show for the new gallery is ‘Cube Light’ by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who recently received buckets of press attention for his sunflower seeds work at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, and his house arrest over his attempts to join a party protesting the closure of his Shanghai studio.

‘Cube Light’ is a large installation work: a ceiling-high grid of glass crystals and light, with the ‘scaffolding’ of the construction visible.

It is the largest example so far of Ai Weiwei’s chandelier series and the first to be shown in a cube shape. The artist was initially inspired by an image from a Sergei Eisenstein Soviet propaganda film.

On display until the end of January 2011, the exhibition also marks the Ai Weiwei’s commercial gallery solo debut in Japan.

The exhibit occupies almost every metre of the gallery, forcing guests at the opening reception to snake around the edges.

Misa Shin chose for her new gallery an old house that was previously an ironworks factory.

The venue's age certainly shows in places.

The launch party also featured a Mercedes-Benz collaboration, with a vehicle designed by Ai Weiwei in canine motifs. It will be 'touring' the country over the next few months.

William Andrews

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William Andrews

William Andrews came to Japan in 2004. He first lived in Osaka, where he was a translator for Kansai Art Beat. Arriving in Tokyo in 2008, he now works as an writer, editor and translator. He writes a blog about Japanese radicalism and counterculture and one about Tokyo contemporary theatre. He is the author of Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima.

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