lot 119
Kikuji Kawada / Chizu (The Map)
23.0 x 15.0 / Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo, 6 August 1965
Eestimate: JPY 800,000 - 1,200,000
USD 7,700-11,500 / EUR 4,900-7,400

When graduating from high school, Kikuji Kawada had one of his works selected by Ken Domon to be published in the magazine ‘Camera’. After graduating in 1955 from Rikkyo University’s department of economics, he entered the company Shinchosha Publishing and was responsible for photographic cover page stories for weekly magazines. In 1959 he began working freelance and started the photographic association ‘VIVO’, which later disbanded in 1961. In 1996 Kawada received the Photographic Society of Japan’s award for most influential photographer of the year and in 2004 received the Art Encouragement prizes cabinet minister’s award. Aside from his solo　exhibitions, he has participated in group exhibitions at the New York MoMA in 1974 and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1986.

‘Maps’ was shown in Kawada’s 1961 solo exhibition of the same name (held at the Tokyo Fujifilm Photo Salon) and was later published in limited editions in the artist’s first photo collection. Despite being long been out of print (and then reprinted in 2005), this is an important first edition. It begins with a text by Kenzaburo Oe and is composed of images of the ‘Atomic Bomb Dome’ of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, fortifications in Tokyo Bay, and other starkly black images that contrast memories of World War II. Kawada stated that he felt ‘it was possible to hear the troubled voices out of the motion of the opening and closing of the folded pages’. This style of page design, called ‘the opening of Kannon’ in Japanese, is used here by designer Kohei Sugi-ura. While the work was influential in its day, this photo collection comes to us today as a great monument of Japanese photography, and in this sense it possesses a powerful message and overwhelming sense of presence.

lot 132 Inez Van Lamsweerde / The widow (black, red, white)
each:50.0 x 50.0cm / 1997
Estimate: JPY 1,500,000 - 2,500,000 / USD14,300-23,900 / EUR 9,200-15,300

Inez van Lamsweerde is a Dutch fashion photographer born in Amsterdam in 1963. She studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam from 1985-90. From 1992 she spent one year as an artist in residency at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and from 1991 began producing works together with partner Vinoodh Matadin.
As one of few artists who are able to truly work along the border between fashion and art, van Lamsweerde has shot for leading fashion magazines in Europe and America as well as for luxury brand advertisements and celebrity portraits. At the same time, she has developed solo gallery exhibitions as well as art projects including ‘Thank You Thighmaster’ and ‘Final Fantasy’ for P.S. 1 in 1993. In 1998 she was the recipient of the ICP Infinity Award.

lot 213
Shinro Ohtake / EZMD I
194.0 x 162.0cm / mixedmedia / framed
Estimate: JPY 2,000,000 - 3,000,000
USD 19,100-28,600 / EUR 12,200-18,300

Graduated from the Department of Painting of Musashino Art University in 1980. During his studies, he traveled all over the world, including to London and Hong Kong. In the early 1980s, he made his striking debut as a flag-bearer of the New Painting movement. In 1989, he spent time making work in the United States at the invitation of the U.S. Information Agency and Millay colony for the Arts. In 1993 he produced the children's book "Jarry Ojisan（Monsieur Jarry）", which won numerous awards. In 2006, he held a large-scale solo exhibition, "Shinro Ohtake Zenkei 1955-2006" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
Ohtake makes use of all media to make his work, including "scrapbooks" that feature everything from adverts to matchbox labels posted into them, as well as paintings, sculptures, books and sound works ? all of which are incredibly dense expressions of his desire to make things. This work from 1984 is one of a series that references the work of Marcel Duchamp. Depicting the human form through a collage of plaster fragments, it recalls a series of consecutive photographs taken during the early 20th century that documented the muscle movements of humans in motion and render them as geometric and diagrammatical imagery ? it was these photographs that inspired Duchamp to paint "Nude Descending a Staircase No.2". In this expression of a three-dimensional figure that differs from the typical backdrop against which it stands, Ohtake has rendered visible a sense of existence that does not lend itself to easy interpretation.

lot 253
Hiroshi Kobayashi / Night flight
45.5 x 53.0cm
acrylic on canvas / framed / 2006
Estimate : JPY 800,000 - 1,200,000
USD 7,700-11,500 / EUR 4,900-7,400

lot 226
Yukinori Yanagi
Three Chinas #1

46.0 x 69.0cm
pencil and watercolor on paper
1991 / framed
Estimate: JPY 200,000 - 300,000
USD 2,000-2,900
EUR 1,300-1,900

Graduated from the Fine Arts Course of the Graduate School of Art and Design at Musashino Art University in 1985. Completed a fellowship at the Sculpture Department of the Yale University Graduate School of Art in 1990. Assumed the position of Associate Professor at Hiroshima City University in 2005. Yanagi is active in holding solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and art projects both in Japan and abroad. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum.
Through his diverse use of technique and his outstanding appreciation of craftsmanship, Yanagi creates installations, video work and paintings that make an incisive investigation of social and political issues. At the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), he won the Aperto prize, and he continues to work on his "Ant Farm Project". In this body of work, he sets up a network of interconnected transparent boxes, each filled with colored sand that depicts national flags. He then releases live ants into the boxes, and they ants eat their way through the national boundaries. In this work, made to the same design, the national flags of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (under British rule at the time the work was made) are mixed together, creating a new, fluid flag, a positive suggestion of a world unrestricted by the boundaries of nation states.

lot 241
Riusuke Fukahori

kaguya meimei koumedan
39.5 x 4.0cm / acrylic on resin, bamboo

kingyo syu
H10.8 x W10.8 x D6.4cm
acrylic on resin, measure

Estimate: JPY 100,000 - 200,000
USD 1,000-2,000 / EUR 700-1,300

Fukahori graduated from the faculty of media design, Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, in 1995. From 1999, he began practicing as an artist. In 2000, inspired by a goldfish that he had been keeping as a pet for 7 years, he began painting this goldfish as a subject. From around 2002 he began to paint his subject directly onto resin that had been poured and set into various kinds of vessels, thus establishing his individual style. In 2003 he received the Imai Norio prize at ‘Turner Acryl Award 2003’, and in 2006 was selected to show in the ‘9th Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art’ exhibition.
An instant of beauty displayed by a goldfish?Fukahori seizes this with a superior power of description, sublimating it into his artwork. Depicted with a delicacy that one would mistake for the real thing, Fukahori’s goldfish are brimming with a sense of motion, as though given the breath of life. The bewitching sense of calm with which this goldfish swims further imbues the image with a refreshing feeling, evoking Japanese summers. There, the warmth with which this artist contemplates the living things around him can also be glimpsed. In July 2008, his solo show will be held at GALLERY IDF in Nagoya .

lot 248
Ai Yamaguchi
Shizukana tetsubin to takamakura
182.3×65.3cm
acrylic on Japanese paper
framed / 2001
Estimate:
JPY 1,200,000 - 1,800,000
USD 11,500-17,200
EUR 7,400-11,000

lot 249
Kae Higuchi / Folds of a sheet
114.9 x 89.8cm / tempera and oil on panel / 2006
Estimate: JPY 700,000 - 1,200,000
USD 6,700-11,500 / EUR 4,300-7,400

Higuchi graduated in art, from Tohoku Seikatsu Bunka College, 1997. In 2005 she was awarded the ‘Miyagi Prefecture Young Artist Prize’, then in 2007 she received the ‘Ohara Museum of Art Prize’ at VOCA 2007. Aside from her solo exhibitions, she has also shown in A MUSE LAND 2006 ‘Sweet Memories’, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, and ‘Art Miyagi 2007’, Miyagi Museum of Art; from her base in Sendai, she continues to energetically pursue her art.

lot 260
Yoshitomo Nara / OH!FUCK!
29.5 x 21.0cm
marker and color pencil on paper / framed
Estimate: JPY 700,000 - 1,000,000
USD 6,700-9,600 / EUR 4,300-6,100

lot 265
Hiroyuki Matsuura / Pancake
35.0 x 35.0cm / acrylic on canvas / 2006
Estimate: JPY 500,000 - 800,000
USD 4,800-7,700 / EUR 3,100-4,900

lot 264 Masao Kinoshita / ONISHIMA
H63.5cm / painted fiberglass / 2004
Estimate: JPY 800,000 - 1,200,000 / USD 7,700-11,500 / EUR 4,900-7,400

Masao Kinoshita graduated from the sculpture department of Tokyo Zokei University in 1991, and in 2003 he was awarded the Geisai Museum’s grand prix. His work was shown in the exhibition of the Teruhisa Kitahara Collection in 2006 (at the Yokohama Doll Museum) and the ‘Exhibition of International Sculpture Masterpiece’ (Taiwan, 2007).
Kinoshita’s sculptures take as their image dissections of animals and characters like those from comic books or animation. While the way the artist models veins, arteries and rippling muscle tissue makes a strong impact on the viewer, the artist himself says those aspects are of no significance to the motifs he has chosen. According to Kinoshita, his inspiration comes from an ‘unconscious sense about solidity’, and that in order to bring that into a visual representation he chooses easily understandable pre-existing characters. For the artist, sculpture is one way to try to have an unconsciously shared feeling with others about the space in front of us. Kinoshita’s sculptures, which come from a foundation in deep philosophical thought, transcend ideas about punctuations in time and the world of which we are aware, ideas which we see through an arbitrary lens we call consciousness.