The Gallery-Share Model Is Finding New Life in Tokyo With an Initiative That’s Bringing a Slew of International Dealers to Japan

A group of Tokyo-based and international galleries are planning
a business-retreat-meets-conference and gallery-share in Japan this
March. The concept, dubbed Onsen Confidential, will bring together
a global assortment of galleries that form a loose network of
kinships. But don’t expect boring lectures and typical roundtables;
the 34 local and visiting gallery teams will head to a traditional
Japanese hot spring, called an onsen, and steam while they hash out
the sticking points of the current market before celebrating the
opening of 12 exhibitions in Tokyo.

The event kicks off on March 26,
with openings on March 28 across the Japanese capital. “Onsen
Confidential is partially a tribute to previous gallery-share
platforms, many of which we took part in,” says Onsen
Confidential’s co-founder Jeffrey Rosen, from Tokyo-based Misako &
Rosen. “However, the prime incentive is not about selling art; this
is about a longer term investment in one another,” he
adds.

Misako & Rosen–whose space will
be hosting Lambalambdalambda from Prishtina, Kosovo, Lulu from
Mexico City, and New York’s 47 Canal–initiated Onsen Confidential
together with Tokyo’s artist-run space XYZ collective; the latter
will be hosting New York’s Queer Thoughts and Schiefe Zahne from
Berlin. The gallery-share concept is not dissimilar to increasingly
popular initiatives, like Condo. “Our idea had
been brewing in Japan for years; we’ve been wondering how we can
contribute to this international scene in a way that feels right,”
says Rosen. And while detoxing in mineral spring water may sound
like an exotic set-up for a meeting of industry professionals, it’s
a rather usual occurrence for Japanese business
retreats.

Rosen said that Onsen
Confidential’s participant list grew naturally through friendships
with dealers who participated alongside him at unique fairs like
Paris International and the now-defunct Paramount Ranch in Los
Angeles.The galleries are mostly all so-called post-Lehmann
galleries, formed after the financial calamities of 2008; as such,
they’ve been quick to embrace collaboration and new ways of working
in an increasingly difficult marketplace.

“I think it’s clear at the
present moment that galleries that are not completely profit-driven
have got to work together,” says Rosen. “While we each have our
various strategies to survive, in coming together we can probably
help each other see various blind spots and hash out how we can try
to make our situations better.”

Dealers are set to arrive to install work a few days after
what would have been the end of Art Basel Hong Kong (a
small wrench in the plan for those who were planning to head to
Tokyo off the back of participation in the Hong Kong fair). Before
the shows open to the public on March 28, the whole Onsen
Confidential crew will head to Hotel New Akao for a night and a
day. There, Forrest Nash, founder of Contemporary Art Daily, will
be in attendance to moderate a semi-formal conference.

Even though it’s a long trip for many of the galleries, for some
the decision was easy. “We love Jeffrey from Misako & Rosen and had
talked about the idea of this project with him since 2016, so it’s
really exciting that it’s now actually here,” says Grace Schofield
and Nigel Dunkley from London-based gallery Union Pacific. They
will be hosted by MUJIN-TO
Production alongside Galerie Gregor Staiger from Zurich and Jan
Kaps from Cologne. The gallery is planning to show
a drawing by Koak (priced at $2,000) and a ceramic lamp by
Tokyo-born, but now Glasgow-based, Urara Tsuchiya (priced
at $6,500). “We are pleased to be showing Tsuchiya back on her
home turf as she has never shown in Japan before,” add the
dealers.

Rosen says that the Onsen
Confidential organizers have been encouraging participants not to
bring too much art, an advisory Union Pacific has heeded. The
Japanese art economy, though highlighted by some dedicated and
informed collectors, has always been slow, a fact he admits can be
difficult and frustrating for galleries, in a business sense. “The
people that are collecting here have been doing so for
non-speculative reasons,” says Rosen. “The economy in Japan does
not lend itself to speculative collecting, art flipping is squashed
immediately, and there are no tax benefits here—it is very pure
that way.”

When asked about the vitality of
gallery-shares in general, Rosen has optimism—but stresses that new
models should not be solely focused on selling, but more about
facilitating new connections, unique projects, and a wider
viewership. “If we present a show in our space it is somewhat in
isolation, given the shift away from the gallery show as the
dominant mode of seeing and experiencing art,” he says. “The
anarchic spirit of gallery-shares seems to have, to some degree,
fallen by the wayside and the events are now being dealt with as as
one might deal with an art fair. We all need to find the original energy for
gallery-share models and retain that spark.”

See the full list of participants below.

Satoko Oe Contemporary (host) – Arcadia
Missa (London, UK), Good Weather (Arkansas, USA), and Federico
Vavassori (Milan, Italy)

MUJIN-TO Production (host) – Galerie
Gregor Staiger (Zurich, Swiss), Union Pacific (London, UK), and Jan
Kaps (Köln, Germany)

THE CLUB (host) – Balice Hertling (Paris,
France)

ANOMALY (host) – Roh Project
(Jakarta, Indonesia) and Emanuel Layr (Vienna, Austria)

AOYAMA | MEGURO (host) – SVIT
(Prague,Czech)

MISAKO & ROSEN (host) – 47 Canal (New
York, USA), Lulu (Mexico city, Mexico), and LambdaLambdaLambda
(Pristina, Kosovo)

Fig. (host) – Max Mayer (Düsseldorf,
Germany)

XYZ collective (host) – Queer Thoughts
(New York, USA) and Schiefe Zahne (Berlin, Germany)

HAGIWARA PROJECTS (host) – Crevecoeur
(Paris, France), Bodega (New York, USA), and Jonathan Hopson
Gallery (Houston, USA)

4649 (host) – Bel Ami (Los Angeles, USA)
and Edouard Montassut (Paris, France)

KAYOKOYUKI (host) – The Green Gallery
(Milwaukee, USA) and Galeria Agustina Ferreyra (Mexico City,
Mexico)

The post The Gallery-Share Model Is Finding New Life in
Tokyo With an Initiative That’s Bringing a Slew of International
Dealers to Japan appeared first on artnet News.