Tokyo Gendai opened its third edition earlier this week with a press and VIP preview preceded for the first time by a curatorial symposium. The discussion brought together M+ curator Isabella Tam, artistic director and chief curator Doryun Chong and Dallas Museum of Art curator Vivian Li—a significant moment and a strategic start for a fair that aims to further the internationalization and global recognition of Japan’s art scene. This was also the first edition of the fair to be held in September, timing that Magnus Renfrew described as a “prime spot” on Japan’s cultural calendar. The new slot aligns with geijutsu no aki, the traditional autumn season for art, and comes as Japan reaches a new peak on the global stage as the second-largest art market in Asia. Tokyo’s only truly international art fair, it arrives in a year dense with cultural milestones—from Expo Osaka to the Aichi Triennale—reinforcing its role as a platform for exchange.
Roughly one-third of the exhibitors were new to the fair, signaling growing interest in reaching Japanese collectors. Still, some galleries chose not to return, underscoring the challenges the market poses for foreign participants and the difficulty of adding another fair to an already crowded September art fair calendar.
To expand its regional dialogue, Tokyo Gendai partnered for the first time with Art Busan on “Crossroads of Contemporary Art,” supporting nine Korean and two Chinese galleries on the fair floor and in a satellite program at Terada Art Complex, where Korean and Japanese galleries shared space. As fair director Eri Takane told Observer ahead of the opening, many of this year’s international collectors who joined the expanded VIP program came from South Korea and other nearby countries, with a notable share belonging to a younger generation.
Japan has a growing group of highly committed art collectors, many of whom started with fashion and sneakers in their twenties and are now shifting toward design and art. In parallel, a rising number of wealthy young people from the region—particularly from China—have been buying homes in Japan and in some cases relocating, creating a new audience for Japanese galleries and artists.
On site, the atmosphere was more relaxed than at other global fairs yet still dynamic. A select group of super VIPs entered an hour before the official 2 p.m. opening, while the redesigned floor plan—with generous spacing between booths—created a more open experience that encouraged lingering and reflection rather than the chaotic density typical of larger international fairs. By mid-afternoon, however, the aisles had filled, and local and regional collectors were actively engaging in conversations across booths.
The spacious layout also made room for 11 large-scale installations and sculptures, featured as part of the curated Sato Meadow program. Highlights included Rieko Otake’s wood sculptures presented by Tomio Koyama Gallery and Otani Workshop’s new bronze-and-gold fantastical figures brought by Kaikai Kiki.
Sokyo Gallery introduced green glimpses of forest with “Art Fair for Earth,” with ceramic works by Kanjiro Kawai, Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Tony Marsh, Sylvie Auvray and Kimiyo Mishima. In its main booth, the Kyoto-based gallery staged an ambitious presentation of uncanny sculptures in hemp cloth and styrofoam by Aoki Chie, where human proportions become malleable and transmute into new humanoid forms. By the opening, a tall vertical sculpture had already sold for ¥7.5 million, with smaller works priced between ¥1.98 million and ¥13.2 million.
After a busy week in Seoul, Johyun Gallery unveiled a more expansive installation of paintings by Kim Taek Sang, whom it began representing this year. With prices ranging from $13,000 to $94,000 depending on scale, his luminous fluid paintings are gaining international traction, having recently been shown with Lehmann Maupin and in Japan. The works extend painting beyond the wall into space, emphasizing the fluidity that defines his practice. In its main booth, Johyun also presented some of its most in-demand artists, including Lee Bae, with a series of charcoal works on paper and bronzes “exploring how time, process and painting can coexist and overlap.” The presentation expands the canvas into a space that is at once performative and meditative. Also on view were signature works by Ha Chong-Hyun and later Ecriture paintings by Park Seo-Bo, carried by the momentous market peak following his recent passing.
Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki gallery presented a roster of highly sought-after artists, mostly from Japan and largely defined by kawaii and manga-inspired aesthetics. The lineup also included several Korean artists, such as Hyunjun Hong, who had a strong reception at Frieze Seoul the week before.
A similar aesthetic was on view at Tokyo-based Nanzuka, which brought pop- and manga-inspired works with big-eyed characters by Apex Pitakpong. Priced between $10,000 and $19,000, his six new works sold out on the first day. The gallery also introduced Yoshiki Muramatsu, a young artist recently discovered and mentored by one of its leading names, presenting portraits that balance manga aesthetics with archetypal spirituality and cosmologies. His androgynous characters, drawn from the subconscious, were priced under $10,000 and sold quickly, following a strong reception at Miami Art Basel last December.
International galleries continued to test the Japanese market, with sales at Japanese booths underscoring its strength. Among returning names, Sadie Coles presented Isabella Ducrot, ahead of a solo show celebrating the restless material explorations of the 90-year-old Italian artist at Ryosuku-In in Kenninji Temple, Kyoto, during Art Collaboration Kyoto. Another highlight was a large new work by Yu Nishimura, the rising Japanese painter whose sold-out Zwirner debut earlier this year led to a co-representation deal.
Pace Gallery in Tokyo kept most prices in the five-digit range, showing a booth that mixed institutional and collectible names, including sculptures by Elmgreen & Dragset, paintings by Jules De Balincourt and new canvases by Gideon Appah. Drawing attention in the corridor were two vibrant new psychedelic tropical landscapes by Alejandro Piñero Belo, the Cuban artist with a long waiting list, timed to his first Asia solo opening the following week at Pace’s Hong Kong space.
Fresh from successful outings at Armory and Frieze Seoul, A Lighthouse called Kanata presented acrobatic sculptural works by Niyoko Ikuta, alongside paintings by Takafumi Asakura and Kentaro Sato’s karashikomi technique, among others. “We play at home here,” the gallery’s founder Wahei Aoyama told Observer, expressing confidence that early momentum would generate even more sales than those already secured before and during the opening hours.
It was a strong opening day for leading Tokyo gallery KOTARO NUKAGA, which by midday had placed a major painting by Tomokazu Matsuyama for over $100,000. The gallery also sold two works by fast-rising painter Tomona Matsukawa (¥1,000,000-3,000,000), three paintings by Morimoto Keita and two works by Yohei Chimura (¥400,000-500,000 each).
Following her acclaimed solo booth at The Armory Show, Japanese-Canadian artist Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka placed a work for around $4,500. Additional first-day sales included two pieces by Takako Araki (around ¥500,000 each), seven drawings by Takehito Koganezawa (around ¥300,000 each) and a painting by Peruvian Indigenous artist Rember Yahuarcani ($35,000-40,000). Yahuarcani, whom the gallery recently began representing, has been in high demand since his presentation alongside his father at the last Venice Biennale.
French gallery Ceysson Bénétière anchored its booth with new work by Bernar Venet, extending his inquiry into algorithmic architecture in parallel with a solo exhibition that opened earlier in the week at the gallery’s new Tokyo location. The program was complemented by a live performance by the artist in the afternoon. The booth also presented a mix of highly sought-after and more institutionally oriented artists from the French gallery’s roster, including new works by Antwan Horfee, Rachel Terravecchia and Wim Delvoye. Speaking with director Leslie Lou during the exhibition opening, Observer learned that the gallery continues to face significant challenges operating in Japan—most notably onerous import taxes and cumbersome bureaucracy. Yet the team remains convinced Tokyo is a stronger choice than once-hyped Asian centers like Seoul or Hong Kong, as it offers the chance to cultivate an entirely new audience eager to engage with their international program.
Debuting in Tokyo, Eva Presenhuber presented new works by Tschabalala Self and Sam Falls, among others. Japanese collectors are more knowledgeable and educated than their Korean counterparts, the gallery’s director Andrea Grimm told Observer, emphasizing that it was still too early to assess the fair’s results. “This is our first time participating in Tokyo Gendai, and the response has been fantastic. We have met many interesting new collectors and curators,” he said, noting that they received interest in all four artists on view, each with major museum exhibitions scheduled in fall 2025: Tschabalala Self at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne, Sam Falls at the Hiroshima Museum of Art, Tobias Pils at the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna and Shara Hughes at the Norton Museum in Palm Beach.
This edition also marked the first participation of Shanghai’s gallery BANK, which reported being generally pleased with the first day’s reactions and interactions. “Japan is a hard market to penetrate, but we had some presales and steady action on the first day,” the gallery’s founder Mathieu Borysevicz told Observer. It presented experimental works by Lu Yang, a Chinese artist they represent who is based in Tokyo and widely known there, making her presence key in attracting both collectors and a broader audience. As Borysevicz noted, Michael Lin, the Taiwanese artist born in Tokyo and long exhibited in Japan, also helped generate institutional acquisition interest.
Highlights and discoveries
Nearby, HARUKA ITO by Island staged one of the fair’s most experimental and ambitious presentations, featuring Nanae Monobe. Drawing from the endless flow of social media characters and popular culture, she pulls images from the doomscroll and translates them into wood structures and plaster forms, transforming fleeting icons into densely textured creatures that appear uncannily real.
Already popular with Japanese collectors—particularly for her abstract canvases—Monobe’s theatrical installations revealed a growing ability as a world-builder. Prices range from $4,000 to $10,000, and the gallery reported early sales and strong interest, especially for her U.S.-inspired pop series. “We are pleased to announce a wonderful response from visitors: the large Bowie work was the very first to be placed, followed by the Trump busts and other pieces, marking a strong and encouraging start to the exhibition,” gallery rep Yui Horiuchi told Observer at the end of the day. This promising young Japanese talent will soon spend a year in the U.S. on a government grant, a move expected to generate further interest and recognition beyond her home country.
Equally experimental was a presentation by Vancouver’s Unit 17, which opted for a minimal booth featuring sculptural aerials of pools and models of changing rooms. These works functioned as psychological and sociological investigations into spaces central to community life, rendered with a resourceful DIY aesthetic and everyday materials. A tape mural stretched across both walls transformed the booth into another sculptural element, while a minimal pin with a lens in Bubble created an entirely new imaginative environment. With only a handful of objects, the booth powerfully evoked how built environments act as shared social frameworks, re-presenting the ordinary physical world through intimate, playful perspectives that invite a childlike sense of exploration. The artist also unveiled Pit (2025), a large-scale installation created specifically for Tokyo Gendai’s Sato section: a rectangular pit resembling a pool, filled with hundreds of blue paper boxes.
This year, the fair’s Hana section offered ample space for discovering promising new talents. Tokyo’s CON Gallery presented work by rising Korean artist Minhee Kim, whose densely textured paintings explore mythology and representations of the female figure in Japanese and Korean traditions. Through layered, sensual applications of paint, she envisions new muses and characters, stripping away stereotyped images drawn from the fluid space of contemporary digital culture. At the same time, she challenges Korean beauty ideals and the endless modifications imposed to meet them, pushing her practice toward increasingly ambitious scales that test and transcend the supposed limits of the female body. Following a residency at Art Om in 2019, Kim will present a monumental work in an upcoming exhibition at the Kuhmo Museum. Yet her prices remain highly accessible, from $4,000 for intimate canvases to $11,000 for her largest works.
PARCEL is another young Japanese gallery that, in just a few years, has built an international reputation through bold, experimental presentations at global fairs. At Tokyo Gendai, the gallery staged a focused solo booth of new paintings by Japanese and New York-based artist Masamitsu Shigeta. After studying at NYU and SVA, Shigata worked in a furniture shop—an experience that continues to inform his practice, as he now crafts the wooden frames that play a central role in his work, encapsulating and completing the dense emotional and memorial charge of his paintings. His canvases depict seemingly ordinary yet deeply nostalgic moments from Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong, unfolding as emotional journeys to places of attachment. By foregrounding the quiet presence of trees and nature, Shigata celebrates the often overlooked beauty of everyday life in work priced from $4,000 to $18,000.
Among the international galleries debuting at the fair, Amsterdam’s No Man’s Art Gallery presented watercolors, textile works and a large tufted installation by Dutch artist Afra Eisma. Her intimate watercolor textiles and more expansive tufted cosmologies tap into a fairy-tale allegorical register, constructing fantastical universes that hold both light and shadow. Viewers are drawn into a dense, symbolic, colorful and tactile world embedded within the very fabric of the works, which serve as containers for emotions. The tufted pieces embody an unfinished, raw quality—echoing the inner life of emotions and memories—while the sewn textiles use stitching as a form of drawing, becoming an evocative tribute to material itself. Prices ranged from $3,700 to $20,000, and eisma’s ever-expanding world is already attracting notable institutional attention in Europe and abroad. The largest work, love is louder (2024), dominated the booth like a climbing plant and was originally commissioned for her recent solo at ICA San Diego.
Another highlight came from Drawing Room, Manila, which featured the work of Robert Gutierrez. His luminous paintings, all priced under $10,000, draw on Filipino folklore as well as a visionary connection to archetypal and symbolic dimensions, channeling alchemical transformations that suggest the interconnected nature of beings and tradition.
Equally memorable was the solo booth by Exit Gallery from Hong Kong dedicated to Konstantin Bessmertny. Drawing on Bosch-like obsessions and an encyclopedic appetite that spans art history from East to West, Bessmertny’s fantastical yet critical works blur history and fiction, weaving tropes into carnivalesque commentary on the absurdity of human behavior and its recurring patterns across time. Born in Siberia and based in Macau, the artist situates his practice within a densely layered imaginary that reconsiders human history at the intersections of Portugal, Japan, fiction and religion—from Nanban art to Portuguese “black ships”—unleashing Boschian symbolic fluxes that stretch toward mythical and epic narratives.
Meanwhile, THEO Gallery (based in Seoul and Jakarta) presented the more poetic work of Wonjyo Choi, who sold a piece within the first hours—a framed pile of paper portraying young children, priced under $5,000. Focusing on images generated in digital environments, the Korean artist seeks to revive intimacy and emotional poetry, working at the intersection of contrasting and reconstructed realms of human experience. Nearby, EM Gallery dedicated its booth to the existential and meditative black-and-white paintings of Moonassi, fresh off a sell-out in Seoul, with several works presold and others deliberately reserved for Japanese and Korean collectors.
Beyond galleries, Tokyo Gendai also reserved booths to spotlight Japan’s growing ecosystem of art spaces and foundations. Special presentations highlighted the Odawara Art Foundation in Kanagawa, the new Futake Foundation in Naoshima and the Obayashi Foundation in Tokyo—an acknowledgment of the institutional infrastructure now supporting the country’s increasingly dynamic art ecosystem, which still has much to offer and further develop.
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