Gallery News

Contemporary art gallery happenings in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Milan

Galerie Perrotin, Tokyo
Today Galerie Perrotin opened its latest 130-square-metre space in Tokyo, adding to a list that includes Hong Kong, Seoul and New York. Initiating the gallery’s Japanese presence is seminal French artist Pierre Soulages, most known for his counter intuitively rich, textural monochromatic black works. Outrenoirs (2011-17) (until 19 August) will be the 97-year-old artist’s second exhibition with Perrotin and will likely be well received by the Japanese public – Soulages won the prestigious Japan Arts Association Praemium Imperiale Global Arts prize in 1992.

Strategically located in Roppongi in the Piramide Building, also home to Wako Works of Art, Ota Fine Arts and London Gallery, Galerie Perrotin also rubs shoulders with the Mori Art Museum and the Taka Ishii Gallery. The gallery forged a connection with Japan in the 1990s by participating in the Yokohama Art Fair and through representing Takashi Murakami. “We’ve seen an evolution with our gallery in Hong Kong and there have been increasingly more Japanese collectors,” said Perrotin to The Art Newspaper. “We’re not going to Japan to propose something that they have already but to take our taste and sensibility,” continued Perrotin.

ACME, Los Angeles
The Los Angeleno gallery will close 10 June after a 22-year run following a recent observation of midsize and smaller US galleries reeling from market pressure. Solo exhibitions by Heather Rasmussen (Body Variations) and Tomory Dodge (Works on Paper) round out the final programming for the space founded by Robert Gunderan and Randy Sommer.

Following its establishment in 1994 in Santa Monica, it relocated to a space near to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for 19 years before shifting again to the LA neighbourhood Frogtown/Elysian Valley. A Californian mainstay, it exhibited artists such as Kai Althoff, Tony Feher, Kurt Kauper and Kristin Baker.

Working with ACME “was as if I was walking into a friend’s apartment, not a place of business,” Kauper wrote on Facebook. “Does that still exist in the art world? Was that only possible with galleries that came up at that time in the early nineties, right after the art market crash, when nobody expected to make much money? Maybe it does. I hope so. And I hope great things are in Bob and Randy’s future. I’ll be forever grateful to both of them.”

While the gallery confirmed its closure, no further reasoning has been provided.

Lisson Gallery, Milan
The Milan branch of Lisson Gallery, which has several spaces in London and New York, came to a close late May with a final exhibition of works by Spencer Finch. The six-year run in Italy began in order to further increase the outreach and external project space of the gallery, a move that, at the time, rose eyebrows as no international galleries had created Italian outposts since 2007 when Gagosian opened in Rome.

The gallery released a statement to artnet News that read: “[…] 2017 is a particularly important year for the gallery, as it celebrates 50 years of working with artists and making exhibitions. From its outset in 1967, the gallery has been international in its outlook. This decision has been difficult but one we feel reflects the future goals of the gallery. The rationale for Milan was to have an external project space, offering artists more opportunities while expanding our reach, developing systems to work internationally and honing our global expertise. Our new exhibition space at 138 Tenth Avenue New York, as well as our location at 504 W 24th Street, presents new opportunities to show experimental work in fresh and innovative ways.”

Initially established in 1967 in London by Nicholas Logsdail, Lisson represents blue-chip artists such as Marina Abramovic, Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor.