WAITINGROOM will participate in the “Art Fair Tokyo 2024” at Tokyo International Forum from March 8 (Fri.) to March 10 (Sun.) 2024, with a solo presentation of Saya Okubo. In conjunction with the fair, a group exhibition by five gallery artists, exonemo, Saya Okubo, Rikako Kawauchi, Fuyuhiko Takata, and Suzuka Toyoda will be held at the gallery. Four of them will exhibit recent works, including new works that have not yet been exhibited in Japan, and Saya Okubo, who will exhibit at the Art Fair, will show two new paintings using corrugated plastics sheeting as materials.
Please enjoy both WAITINGROOM booth at the fair and the exhibition in the gallery space. (The exhibition at the gallery will continue until March 31st.) At the same time, Saya Okubo’s solo exhibition “Leitmotiv” will be held at Nihombashi Mitsukoshi Honten, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY. Please visit this exhibition as well.
Exhibiting Artists
exonemo
left: “Click and Hold: x377px, y931px, 67dpi”, 2019, acrylic, pencil and nails on canvas, H609 x W762 mm
right: Solo exhibition “LO” 2019 (WAITINGROOM, Tokyo) installation view
exonemo is a Japanese artist group by Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa formed in 1996 on the internet. Starting in 2000, they started their activities in an actual space, presenting installation work, performance and organizing events. They live and work in New York since 2015. In 2006, they won the Golden Nica for Net Vision category at Prix Ars Electronica. In 2012, they formed Internet Secret Society named “IDPW” and have been organizing “Internet Yami-Ichi” in both Japan and abroad since then. This exhibition will feature 4 new works from the “Click and Hold” series of obliquely tilted paintings. Their recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition “On Memory” (2023, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo) ,a group exhibition “GEMINI Laboratory Exhibition” (2022, ANB Tokyo, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Aichi Triennale 2019” (2019, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi) and many others. At their solo exhibition “EXONEMO UN-DEAD-LINK [Reconnecting to Internet Art]” held in 2020 (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo), they were awarded the 2020 (71st) Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In 2021, they were selected as the third artist for the Obayashi Foundation’s grant program “Visions of the City – Obayashi Foundation Research Program”, and a book documenting their research, “Infected Cities,” was published in 2023.
Saya Okubo
Left: “They”, 2023, acrylic and oil on corrugated plastics sheeting, H 505 x W 410 mm
Right: “They”, 2023, acrylic and oil on corrugated plastics sheeting, H 425 x W 355 mm
Born in Fukuoka in 1992. She completed her graduate studies at Kyoto University of Art and Design, Department of Painting in 2017. Currently based in Tokyo. She creates paintings in which two separate elements coexist: symbolic images expressed as outlines and the undulation of abstract images with a sense of substance. This exhibition will feature two new paintings using corrugated plastics sheeting as materials. Her recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition “Box of moonlight” (2022, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “The mirror crack’d from side to side” (2022, Roppongi Hills A/D gallery, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “We are defenseless. / We are aggressive.” (2022, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi Honten, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “They” (2020, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Island with ONI” (2019, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “a doubtful reply” (2018, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo). Her work attracted a lot of attention when she won the Masami Shiraishi Award at the 4th CAF Award Winning Exhibition (Daikanyama Hillside Forum, Tokyo), a group exhibition she participated in the fall of 2017.
Concurrent Exhibition
Saya Okubo Solo Exhibition “Leitmotiv”
“That wound”, 2024, acrylic and oil on canvas panel, H1303 x W970 mm
Duration: 3/6 (Wed.)- 18 (Mon.), 2024
Venue : Nihombashi Mitsukoshi Honten, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY (Tokyo)
More Info: https://www.mistore.jp/store/nihombashi/shops/art/art/shopnews_list/shopnews0208.html
Rikako Kawauchi
left: “making honey” 2023, oil on canvas, 910 x 727 mm
right: “punch” 2022, wire and pin on paper mounted with acrylic box, 420 x 510 x 200 mm
Born in Tokyo in 1990, graduated from Tama Art University’s Graduate School of Fine Arts with a major in oil painting in 2017. Currently based in Tokyo. With an interest in food as her starting point, she is an artist who expresses the obscurity of the body and thought, self and others, and their interrelationships, which are obscured in communication where various elements such as eating, conversation, and sex interact with each other, while crossing a wide range of media. This exhibition will feature several paintings and one wire work, both previously unreleased in Japan. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition “Even the pigments in paints were once stones” (2023, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “The Voice of the Soul” (2023, ERA GALLERY, Italy), a group exhibition “Body, Love, Gender” (2023, GANA ART CENTER, Korea), a group exhibition Arts Maebashi 10th Anniversary Exhibition “New Horizon—From History to the Future” (2023, Arts Maebashi, Gunma). She was awarded the “VOCA Award,” the grand prize, at the “VOCA Exhibition 2022” to be held at the Ueno Royal Museum, 2022. Other awards include the Yuki Terase prize at the “TERRADA ART AWARD 2021,” the art egg prize at the “shiseido art egg” in 2015, and the Kenjiro Hosaka Prize at the “1st CAF Award” in 2014.
Fuyuhiko Takata
left: ”Leave Britney Alone!”, 2009, single channel video with sound, 3min. 34sec.
right: ”VENUS ANAL TRAP”, 2012, single channel video with sound, 2min. 40sec.
Born in 1987 in Hiroshima, currently lives and works in Chiba. He completed the doctoral course in oil painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2017. Drawing on fairy tales and myths as a base material, Takata creates video works that deal with themes such as gender, sexuality, loneliness, narcissism, and trauma in a transgressive manner. Prior to his solo presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 at the end of March, the exhibition will feature two video works, “VENUS ANAL TRAP” and “Leave Britney Alone!”. His recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition “Cut Pieces” (2023, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Storymakers in Contemporary Japanese Art” (2022, The Japan Foundation Sydney, Sydney), a solo exhibition “LOVE PHANTOM 2” (2021, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a group exhibition “When It Waxes and Wanes” (2020, VBKÖ, Austria), a solo exhibition “MAM Screen011: Fuyuhiko Takata” (2019, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “Dream Catcher” (2018, Alternative Space CORE, Hiroshima), a solo exhibition “LOVE PHANTOM” (2017, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “STORYTELLING” (2016, Kodama Gallery, Tokyo), a group exhibition “MOT Annual 2016 Loose Lips Save Ships” (2016, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo), and many others.
Suzuka Toyoda
left: “Gazing at”, 2023, oil and charcoal on canvas, H 455 x W 652 mm
right: “bed bug”, 2023, oil and charcoal on canvas, H 410 x W 530 mm
Born in Mie in 1996, graduated from Tokyo University of The Arts in 2021 with a degree in painting (oil painting). She is currently based in Ibaraki. Her paintings are based on the motifs of people and landscapes she has witnessed in her daily life, images from the internet, and incorporate her own memories and images. In this exhibition, she will show 4 paintings that have not yet been exhibited in Japan. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition “Fluctuation” (2023, Soka Art Innermost, Taiwan) a solo exhibition “zapping” (2023, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi Honten, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Human” (2023, CHANGTING GALLERY, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “catch a glimpse” (2021, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), a solo exhibition “Past Days” (2021, RISE GALLERY, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Courtyard HIROO Selection 2021: Look Forward! (2021, Courtyard HIROO, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Intersection -Now, from here” (2021, Bunkamura Gallery, Tokyo), a group exhibition “the sight of the stars makes me dream” (2021, SCÈNE, Tokyo), a group exhibition “Collectors ‘Collective vol.4 Osaka’“(2021, TEZUKAYAMA GALLERY, Osaka), and a group exhibition “Shape of Gaze” (2020, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo). Although she is a young artist with only a few exhibitions under her belt, her works have attracted a great deal of attention.
