Daimaru Fukuoka Tenjin takes its largest-ever booth for its first Art Fair Asia Fukuoka
Daimaru Fukuoka Tenjin is exhibiting at Art Fair Asia Fukuoka for the first time, taking the fair's largest booth at the October event and tying it to a city-wide programme across eight venues.
Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores Co., Ltd. said its Daimaru Fukuoka Tenjin store will exhibit at Art Fair Asia Fukuoka for the first time this year, taking the fair's largest booth, jointly with the Fukuoka gallery UG. The fair runs 2 to 4 October at the Fukuoka International Center, according to the company's own announcement.
The booth will show work by gallery artist Kunihiko Nohara, known for wooden sculptures finished in acrylic paint, and by Ryosuke Kawahira, whose pop-art-style paintings of trousers have drawn attention; a roughly seven-metre balloon sculpture by Nohara is set to serve as a landmark at the fair entrance, the company said. Daimaru is also running a city-wide tie-in from late September across eight venues, including Sumiyoshi Shrine, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and four hotels, among them the Ritz-Carlton Fukuoka.
A department store's first appearance at a regional art fair, timed to a multi-venue city tie-in, is as much a real-estate signal as a cultural one: Fukuoka has spent the past few years building a contemporary-art and design identity around the fair and its hotel partners, and putting Daimaru's name across eight of those venues before the fair even opens is a bid to be read as part of that circuit, not just a department store hosting an occasional exhibition.