POLA Annex, Ginza

POLA is a cosmetics firm based in Japan, which was founded in Shizuoka nearly 100 years ago! It started out as a chemical products firm, but quickly branched out. It’s an international brand now, but still mostly popular within Japan, and not that well known outside the islands. There are a lot of branches dotted around, and I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a facial done at one of them but have not yet got round to doing so. However, POLA also has an art foundation; giving scholarships and sponsoring works around Japan.

They also own a well-stocked museum in Hakone; Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso and Léonard Foujita are represented within the museum’s collection. It’s definitely worth a visit, and Hakone isn’t far out from Tokyo at all. I’ve visited once, and was rather impressed both by the indoor and outdoor esthetics; I’d like to go back and do a photoshoot sometime. In the meantime, I’ll make do with the cute gift shop stuff my friends bought for me – a rather crazy looking Monet post-it set, and a badge with a popular Renoir painting. Japan really knows how to market things – I have more stuff here than I know what to do with, all of it cute or memorable or somehow unpartable with.

There’s an art annex above their store in the midst of the upmarket district of Ginza, so we went to have a gander at what it had to offer. It’s not a particularly large gallery – just the one room, but what it had to offer was very enjoyable.

This particular exhibit, Crystal Universe, was a combination of colour-changing LEDs in a darkened room, accompanied by music. The Japan Times provides a little more background on the event:

“Artist collective teamLab was founded in 2001, and its members include artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, architects, designers and editors. Its work, therefore, has always been of a sophisticated artistic and technological nature. For the Pola Museum, it is turning the building’s annex gallery into an atmospheric interactive space, using 60,000 LEDs in a 3-D form.”

I just re-read it myself, and visitors could somehow adjust the lights through the website, so I wish I had knows that! We were absolutely mesmerized by the lights and colours. I wished that the short bursts of music/color were a little longer – each phrase was around a thirty seconds maximum, and I felt that something longer could have been orchestrated to keep the audience’s attention longer, instead of constantly waiting and wanting for more. Still – can’t complain. I’m an absolute sucker for lights and colours – fireworks, fireflies… winter illuminations are the bright spot in an otherwise cold and dank season.

You can check out their upcoming exhibitions here. I’m intrigued by November’s “Hats Off!” – I’ll probably pop by and let you know what they’re like!

Location: Pola Museum Annex; Pola Ginza Bldg. 3F, 1-7-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Free admission.

Tokyo Art Book Fair, 2015

The Tokyo Art Book fair was one of the most stunning gatherings of creativity I’ve experienced in one place since coming to Japan. Although I love living in the countryside, it’s the masses of creativity that can be experienced in the city that I miss, so I was determined to visit. I set off early in the morning on the three hour train to Tokyo, ready to read.

The fair was being held at Tohoku University of Art and Design (Gaien Campus), on three beautifully sunny days. The campus was easy to find, just a few minutes’ walk from the station. I visited on the final day, a Monday, 21^st of September. Apparently, the first two days had been quite packed, so I was glad to be there early Monday to avoid the crowds. There were still a lot of people around, so my giant hiking bag was a little distracting, but I later managed to put it behind a table and wander around more freely. The fair started out in the courtyard with a selection of delicious looking food (and each stall with some cookbooks or trinkets that matched the culinary theme) and led into a corridor, with a number of rooms to choose from.

The ground floor held one large “international” room, with vendors selling photobooks from all over the world, whereas the smaller rooms were dedicated to less well-known exhibitors, some tended to by the photographers themselves. It was great to see some zines and university students displaying their wares, and I was impressed by the sheer talent and creativity crammed into one building.

The upper floor held even more stalls, separated into smaller rooms, and one larger area dedicated to printing. The printing room – oh the printing room! There were reams of paper, from stacks of B5 to paper that could have served as a small bed, carefully piled on wooden pallets. It was stationery heaven. Although I resisted buying any books for myself (buying a single one would have unleashed a floodgate), I did pick up a rather interesting notebook. Rather than paper, it’s a few whiteboard pages spiral-bound together. It came with a thin whiteboard marker and eraser, and seemed rather useful for classes, so I parted with ¥2,000 yen for it – rather pricey for a normal notebook, but not that bad when you consider that it’s good just about forever! When I took it home and opened it up, I noticed four squares on each page, one on each corner – very much like what you see for QR codes. Following that line of thought, I did a brief internet search on the brand and figured out that there was an accompanying application that allowed me to scan and upload any notes I wanted to save onto my phone! Very handy. I could easily just snap a photograph, of course, but the app cleans up the note a little and organizes it a bit better. I think it’s a bit like Evernote.

 I couldn’t resist buying a bunch of poetry postcards either. As I browsed through the rooms (I genuinely went through each one at least thrice, finding new things to catch my eye each time), I was hearing a mix of both Japanese and English, but a particular accent caught my ear as I walked by a table. It was Singlish, so I stopped to have a chat and look through what they had to offer. I have an especial soft spot for anything from Malaysia and Singapore, so I may have just… bought the entire set. Um. Moving on. Sarah and Schooling were the company present at the school, and I discovered an excellent Singaporean poet, Joshua Ip, whose poetry was embossed on the cards. I tried to purchase a book online, but it seems they’re all sold out.

Spoils of Singapore

I also found an old friend working the stalls at Shashasha, a photography gallery based in Shibuya. They showcase Japanese and Asian photographers, and even offer an app to view the photographers they publish! It’s pretty forward thinking, and they had a good range of books. I was fascinated by the dreamy black and white photos by Kiyoshi Suzuki

Kiyoshi Suzuki, Aus Mind Games, 1982

 Kiyoshi Suzuki, The town of circus tent 1983

Another of my friends is doing an internship with a German publisher, Kehrer. I’m so glad he found me (I drifted past the stall before he spotted me and called me back), because I discovered a new photographer who I’ve become slightly obsessed with – Vee Speers. Her style is very light and exposed; simple backgrounds, focusing on a single subject in a photo. The book I saw, Bulletproof, was a 6 year project in the making. Speers took photos of children in dress-up, posed, masked, uncertain, young. Then, years later, she returned to do the same, but showing their growth and change, adding strange, fighting props to signify how they have to adapt to the world around them. Some might call it pretentious and unoriginal, but I felt she really captured the atmosphere and vulnerability of the current generation. The fairy-tale vibe works well with their bizarre costumes.

Vee Speers, Bulletproof

The Tokyo Art Book fair is an annual event, and one well worth visiting. Keep your calendars free in 2016 mid-September, and go have a look at the mad stacks of creativity for yourself! I felt pretty inspired by the whole thing and went out for a photowalk with a friend the following weekend. But that is another post for another day.

~x.jaz.x.~