Make Ginza the disseminating and birthplace of culture

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP will hold a solo exhibition "uneven stone" by Takeshi Hayashi from September 29 (sat) to November 10 (sat). On the final day of Afternoon Galleries which is one of the events of Autumn Ginza hosted by Zenginzakai and 11 galleries participate from October 17 to November 3, Tokyo Art and Live City Project, for the first time in this year, will be held at this gallery.

It is the project that visitors can experience the collaboration of art and performance. Using installation of pottery and wood as a stage, Takanori Kakihara, who is a young Japanese drum player of Takayasu school, will play the drum without regard to traditional songs. Watching arts and listening to the sound is an encounter with a once-in-a-lifetime meeting that can experience the music that is a substance and the vibration of air, and can never reprise.

Prior to this Hayashi exhibition, we organized "extinction" exhibition collaborated by Toshi Ichiyanagi, contemporary musicians, and Takahiro Kondo, ceramic artist on May of this year. It is an experimental exhibition where Kondo improvisatorially makes a clay vessel, Mamiko Kobayakawa of viola begins to play the music composed by Ichiyanagi at the same time he pour water into it, then the six vessels collapse at the end.

In retrospect, various genres of artists including contemporary art performances and live music live repeatedly presented experimental expressions at the Sogetsu Hall of Aoyama in 1960s to 1970s. The most shocking thing I witnessed was the performance in which Akaji Maro, who was a performer, of Butoh group ran around the audience. Tokyo was full of avant-garde activities.
Hold the live performances that awake people watching again after 50 years in a various place of Ginza; this is the plan of Tokyo Art & Live City Project.

We want to change Tokyo, which has transformed into a town of consumption, to the production place of "intangible goods" instead of "tangible goods". Instead that 2018 is remembered as the last year of Heisei, let's make it the year of the cradle of culture that can connect to the next era.

Hozu Yamamoto
Co-director of Tokyo Gallery + BTAP