Gallery's Picks for the Month (Park Hotel Tokyo Exhibition Vol.2)

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theme: Time-space to Experience the Japanese Aesthetics

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Park Hoterl Tokyo offers first-hand experience of Japanese aesthetics through various artworks.

Among them, we are currently holding an exhibition and sale titled "Ametsuchi no Uta - Song of Heaven and Earth" exhibition. In addition to the exhibition in the common area on the 25th floor, two artists are also working on the "Artist Room" project, in which the entire guest room becomes a work of art, during their stay.

The "Songs of Ame-tsuchi" exhibition currently being held in the common area and atrium on the 25th floor presents Japanese aesthetics in four themes: "Festivals (Four seasons)", "Contemporary Art✕ Play (Fun)", "Color and Emotion (Love)", and "Craft✕ Art (Thought)". The exhibits are open to the public, even if you are not a guest. The exhibits are also available for purchase (with the exception of a few pieces).

We invite you to experience the beauty of Japan in the common area and atrium, as well as the wonderful view from the 25th floor of the Park Hotel Tokyo.

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Yume Aoyama

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Aoyama was born in 1997 in Ibaraki, Japan, and graduated from Tohoku University of Art & Design, Graduate School at Painting Research Area.
While a student, he participated in 3331 ARTFAIR TOHOKUCALLING (3331 Arts Chiyoda). In the same year, he had his first solo exhibition, "Gaze at the Absurd" at Court Gallery Kunitachi, and won the Grand Prize in the General Section of the 72nd Niki Exhibition, Niki Prize.
Aoyama has been creating works based on the motif of a universal form of thinking about death in the environment where people live with nature, through his research on Mukasari ema, a memorial service custom in the Murayama region of Yamagata Prefecture.

He is currently researching the symbiosis between humans and nature, which repeatedly heals and destroys itself, by viewing modern life with a mythological mindset. He is interested in beasts that mix without boundaries in the face of calamity, and creates works using the skin and hair of various beasts before disposal as materials.

《Sunday》2022 / h415×w325×d50mm / silk, acrylic , thread

For this exhibition, we are also participating in the "Artist Rooms," where entire hotel guest rooms will be turned into works of art." The theme is "local toys" and we are currently working on an exciting guest room. After the exhibition is over, these rooms will be available for overnight stays. Please stay tuned.

view in progress

【artist's comment】
From the Edo period to the Meiji period (1868-1912), fun dolls and toys were made in various regions of Japan using familiar materials such as paper and wood, in the hope that children would grow up healthy and happy. They were born out of everyday life in various parts of Japan and reflect local legends, beliefs, aesthetics and a sense of happiness.
In the Artists' Room, the motifs of "local toys" born from such daily life will be used to create works. The toys, which are usually displayed on shelves, will be magically transformed into a journey of adventure through Japanese nature, using embroidery and paint to create new stories. (Dreams of Aoyama)

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Nozomi Tanaka

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　Nozomi Tanaka was born in 1989 in Miyagi.　　She develops her style on the basis of folklore or anthropological research and field work of Tohoku region.

《Knowing the Day 》2017 / h606×w455mm / panel, hemp cloth, chalk, shell powder, mad paint, mineral pigments, sumi ink and foils

"Knowing the day" means "knowing the calendar and fire technology", according to Tanaka. These skills, which have been handed down from generation to generation, overlap with the landscape of the burning fields Tanaka once saw in Yamagata, which provided the background for this work. In the Shonai region of Yamagata, rabbits are a familiar animal due to their connection with the Gassan religion. It is considered to be a messenger of the god Gassan, who symbolises the other world, and a mediator between the other world and this world. By depicting the people who continue the burning of the mountains until the present day through the rabbits, the work expresses that this behaviour is connected to the ancestors (the other world).

Tanaka is also participating in the 'Artist Room' this time, and is working on the concept of '48 Hundred Rabbits'.

view in progress

【artist's comment】
The name is a play on the term "forty-eight tea and one hundred rats" (shijuhacha hyakunezu), which was created among the common people in the late Edo period to describe a colour. Forty-eight and one hundred were not actual numbers, but the number 48 was used in ancient Japan as a 'lucky number of many'. The Edo period (1603-1868) ongoing prohibition of extravagance specified everything from the type of fabric to the colour of dyeing for both samurai and merchants. In particular, strict controls were imposed on the use of silk, cotton and linen as kimono fabrics for the townspeople, and the use of gaudy dyed colours was forbidden, with brown and rat colours being reserved for those who did not care for them. In response to the Shogunate's "prohibition of extravagance", which forbade the common people to be extravagant and extravagant, the people of Edo (present-day Tokyo) enjoyed various variations on the sober shades of brown, black and rat colours, each named after popular Kabuki actors and the landscape of the wind, moon and water at the time. Within the permitted colour range, new colours were introduced one after another with subtle dyeing distinctions, such as 'roko-cha', 'danjuro-cha', 'ume-nezumi' and 'hatoba-zumi', and in the pursuit of 'different' and 'stylish' kimonos even in subdued tones, the Japanese sense of beauty is evident. The Japanese aesthetic sense can be seen in the pursuit of "different kimono" and "chic kimono", even in subdued colours.
Furthermore, the prohibition of extravagance and the control of culture imposed restrictions on Kabuki and Yose, which were the entertainment of the common people at the time. Ukiyo-e was also subject to the ban on luxury, and it was forbidden to paint shunga (spring pictures), pictures of kabuki actors, prostitutes, geisha and other beauties. However, Edo period painters continued to produce cynical works in response to the shogunate's restrictions, while circumventing the ban. (Examples: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 'Minamoto no Yorimitsu kokan dokkosaku yokai zu'; Kitagawa Utamaro, 'Komei bijin Rokuke sen Tatsumi rokou'; Utagawa Hozen, 'Neko no sekai'; Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 'Neko no hyakumensho'; Utagawa Toyokuni, 'Kudo saemon suketsune'; Fujikawa Sada, 'Yokai, kimonosetsu'; Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 'Kahozo no kabe no muda shou'; Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 'Kameki myojyo'.)
The artist feels that the spirit of Japanese aesthetics and contemporary art can be found in the rebellious spirit of the common people and painters of Edo, who found enjoyment in a less overt way in their work against the shogunate. Therefore, I would like to attempt an expression arising from the relationship with the culture and history of Edo, Tokyo's roots, by painting homages to motifs drawn by Edo-era painters (using rabbits as a motif) and scenes of rabbits inspired by the colour names of 48 tea and 100 rats, all over the walls of the room. (Nozomu Tanaka)

In addition, in early September, the artworks in the hotel's 25th floor atrium, the communal area, were also changed, with the new exhibits Inochi no Koukan - Spring and Inochi no Koukan - Winter. These works are also a must-see.

Nozomi Tanaka 《Interaction of Life-winter》(left), 《Interaction of Life-spring》(right),2020, 900x1500mm each
hemp cloth, shell powder, mud paint, acrylic, sumi ink, foil

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Bunpei Kado

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Recently, at the Kiaf SEOUL art fair in Seoul, South Korea, in September, he won one of the top three prizes at Kiaf SEOUL 2023 Highlights, selected from more than 150 artists from participating galleries around the world, as voted by visitors. Kado Bunpei is an artist who has been remarkably active in a variety of venues, including at Maison Hermès in Ginza, where he developed an image of a climbing hold shaped like a floating island in a window that opened onto the city, and presented a dynamic work that blends sports, art and fashion.

Kado was born in 1978 in Fukui Prefecture. He is a fascinating artist with an honest ability to express himself based on his childlike freedom of imagination and a reproduction ability based on his delicate, Japanese-like modelling skills. Despite being painstakingly crafted, his creations give the illusion of being everyday objects picked up from somewhere else. With humorous and witty ideas, combined with the everyday lives, always has a subtle sense of discomfort and has the power to make the viewer look at the work. In this exhibition, the works are arranged on a display stand in front of the reception area, creating a single world by themselves.

Bunpei Kado《Ropppongi Galaxian》200x200x350㎜、2022 mixed media

The work "Roppongi Galaxian", which is based on the space rocket from the 1979 shooting game "Galaxian", was also added to the autumn exhibition. Enjoy it together with the real Tokyo Tower, which can be seen from window of the .25th Floor, where the artworks are awaiting for you!

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Takeshi Abe

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A new exhibition of works by Takeshi Abe is on display at the autumn exhibition change.

Abe was born in Tokyo in 1977. He creates ambiguous two-dimensional works by photographing portraits and landscapes, breaking them down into images on a computer and colouring the wooden cubes according to colour samples.

What Abe's work conveys is the presence of ambiguous and uncertain things such as people's memories, emotions and signs. The methodical arrangement of the coloured cubes represents mainly people and landscapes, but with their specific characteristics reduced to the barest minimum. By reproducing only the information as an array of colours, Abe's chosen objects become a mosaic, stripped of the features and details that identify them as people or landscapes. The collection of fragments that have thus become colour cubes are complemented by pieces from the memory of each viewer, forming an image once again and reducing the anonymous existence to a unique 'someone' or 'somewhere' for the viewer.

Takeshi Abe《Day dream＃46》880x880x65㎜、wood cube, panel 2018

The exhibition 'Ametsuchi no Uta - Song of Heaven and Earth' runs until Sunday 19 November.
Anyone is welcome to view the works and purchase them on the spot. Please visit the 25th floor of the Shiodome Media Tower.

★ Hotel website
★ Yume Aoyama Artist Room
★ Nozomi Tanaka Artist Room