Hong Kong , November 2008 – Opera Gallery has announced it is about to hold it’s first show of Japanese Contemporary Art in the region. The debut of the show will be in it’s Hong Kong gallery branch in Central. The show celebrates the rapid growth of the Japanese art market. Exhibits showcasing contemporary Japanese artworks draw huge crowds all throughout the world, where artistic phenomena’s such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, have sold works in excess of 10 million HKD.
Back in the late 1980s, Japan was the center of gravity in the international art market. Cash-flush corporations and real estate moguls snapped up trophy works by Vincent Van Gogh and Picasso for huge sums.
In the 1990s came the end of Japan's "bubble’’ economy .The Japanese art market suffered the after-effects of the collapsed bubble economy and subsequent deflation for years, yet now, though nowhere near on the scale it was back in the '80s, it is showing strong signs of a comeback. The difference this time is that a new wave of Japanese modern artists are lighting the way, rekindling collectors interest at home and abroad. The art market seems more attractive now than ever, with Japanese works selling at reasonable prices, especially in relation to the record prices surfacing in art markets China and India. Also fueling the contemporary art revival in Japan are Investment funds that are buying up works with the view that they appreciate in value long- term. Overseas art collectors are now highly active in Japan's modern art scene with over 40% of bidders in Japan auction houses from foreign countries.
Opera Gallery has spent the last two years exploring Japans art market and building relationship with the most interesting and innovative new artistic voices in Japan. The collection displayed In ‘WONDERLAND - Contemporary Japanese Art’ unfolds the works of 19 artists with a wide range of styles and mediums. The mass popularity of Anime and Manga art, Japanese styles of animation and comic graphic stories are evident in this collection.
Today ‘s Japanese artists are less beholden to western artistic styles and are developing original works with global appeal. Some of these artists started their careers making illustrations for newspapers and magazines, working in advertising and design, creating characters for Manga comics and TV production.
The show exposes their diverse talents; from Yokoo TADANORI and Yayoi KUSAMA, two of the largest contemporary artists in Japan, who devoted themselves completely to their art from the 1960’s, up to Ninagawa MIKA who started her career with Photography and achieved experience as film director and Hiroyuki MATSUURA whom just in the last few years has started receiving international acclaim for his Manga style painting and loveable Bunny sculptures.
In the collection also is Takashi Murakami Kiki sculpture, a 2 meter cartoon figure holding a stick with 3 skulls attached to it’s end, standing on top of a flower ball. Murakami is considered the first to make an attempt to blur the boundaries between high end art and popular art with themes from mass media and pop culture or marketable commercial goods such as figurines or phone caddies.
A bit about Manga:
Since the 1950s, Manga have steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing industry, representing a 481 billion yen market in Japan in 2006 (approximately $4.4 billion USD). Manga is widely read by people of all ages, so that a broad range of subjects and topics occur in, including action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business and commerce.
WONDERLAND Cotemporary Japanese Art will run through 15 of December 2008 and is open to the public free of charge.
