Series: Bagatelle

2010-03-01T05:19:00.000-08:00

ALL IMAGES: GALLERMIC | BAGATELLE, 2010, COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS, DIGITAL LAMBDA PRINTS.
For dear collector, contact Magic Room Gallery.

Tea for Two. 70 X 50CM

Untitled #19. 70 x 50CM (detail)

Untitled #20. 50 X 70CM

Untitled #21. 52 X 37CM

Untitled #22. 37 X 52CM

Untitled #23. 50 X 70CM

Bagatelle

2010-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

Willa presented Bagatelle, a frivolous remark on February 21th, 2010.
Thanks for celebrating the attractive levity of life with me. I wish I could be bagatelle for ever, but c'est pas possible. To be honest, I don't want it! I leave you with the photos of the party plus an interview about my exhibition Bagatelle. Take care and see you soon...

●日本語アップローディング。。。
///Where is here?
A small apartment in Tokyo. But what's important here is not the space, neither the action per se, my personal approach to these situations of frivolousness is from the fragile side, to show the ambiguity of the perfect moments.

^{Among the guests were artist Yasushi Ebihara. Tokyo Photo's director Tomo Harada. Art collectors Keita Arisawa, Johnnie Walker, Mitsuru Shimazu and Satoshi Okada. Show girl Jasmine. Model Nakao. Special thanks to Willa's co-hostess Vivienne Sato, to the fabulous Lauren Levitt aka Cotton Bale for performance, to selector kyc//phi., and to curator Azusa Shintaku.}

///What has been bagatelle in your recent days?
I was in the gymnasium riding the stationery bike while watching the Winter Olympics on the command screen. Suddenly a beautiful contestant showed on the ice-floor skating so effortless and ethereally like a spirit. I saw my neighbors on the rest of bikes, we were all staring at him, captivated by the grace and elegance of the dancer. What's more, being in a gym full of heavy and tough people, I could feel we all wanted to be as beautiful and delicate as the skater, for a brief instant, life was a precious and fragile state of mind for all of us.

///Getting back at your photos, are they lovers?
It's up to you. For me, they are lovers in a very broad sense, principally they share the same moral.

///Are they eternal?
Not them. The bagatelle is eternal.

///As Galle, what is to love someone?
To love someone is a logical consequence of it all... I hope...

///Show us some art objects that call to mind this bagatelle feeling?
"La Cienaga" and "La Nina Santa" by Lucrecia Martel. The beautiful idle Sicilian boys in Wilhem Von Gloeden's photography. The Rococo, of course. "Puce Moment" by Kenneth Anger. Many of the paintings by the impressionists Renoir and Degas. Also Edward Hopper. J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories. Poems by Blanca Varela. "The White Balloon" by Jafar Panahi. "L'eclisse" and "Blow Up" by Michelangelo Antonioni. "Mouchette" and "Pickpocket" by Robert Bresson. Valses by Chopin and Jazz music, specially the pure Ella Fitzgerald! Back in the 20's, the divine flappers! Shigenobu and in general the exquisite Japanese Ukiyoe prints depicting beauties and geishas. BUT maybe the best of all is Rembrandt's collection of self-portraits (insubstantial and even feigned in the best way!), and Rubens' muses: their lascivious almond eyes, their fresh insolence as though they were always up for the next rape, their glowing vibrant voluptuousness, they make me happy! OH.. Chloe Sevigny looks like them hahaha...
Gallermic

PROMO:Next-> 2/20 (sat) Willa presents "Bagatelle"
a frivolous remark: six rectangles of irrelevance by Gallermic
Next Willa is about the attractive levity of life. Bagatelle is a beautiful literary word that describes a light frivolous thing.
Willa is idle, intrascendent and extremely useless like a poem about daylight, or like a
painting hanging on the wall. Like art itself, Willa contemplates a
private world, a better one, possible in the unreal and bagatelle at the backbone.
Willa は "Bagatelle" を宣言する | Gallermicによる、六つの長方形の無関係：惰性の思索。。。今回のWillaは、生命の蠱惑的な儚さを取り
上げる。"Bagatelle" は修辞的な文藝用語で、矮小な事物を意味する。Willaは、陽の光の詩や、壁に架かった絵画のように、全くの徒らだ。藝術そのものが如く、
Willaはさらに非現実的かつ怠惰な、内なる世界を背後に目して沈思する。

PROMO:WILLA presents “Bagatelle”at Magic Room in Nadiff, Ebisu
2/21 sat, 8pm - 5am
Featuring: Faux~queen performance by Cotton Bale
Hosted by Gallermic & Vivienne Sato
Music: Kyc//phi. & Querelle
Entry fee: 1500Yen(1drink)
"Bagatelle" series. Some rectangles of irrelevance by Gallermic

that will be on display at Magic Room in Nadiff,

Ebisu's intellectual spot.

See you next Willa! ^3/20

Series: Willa

2010-01-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

ALL IMAGES: GALLERMIC | WILLA, 2010, B/W & COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS, 37 X 52CM, DIGITAL LAMBDA PRINTS.
For dear collector, contact Magic Room Gallery.

Untitled #1

Untitled #2

Untitled #3

Untitled #4

Series: The Absentee Owner

2010-01-21T12:46:00.000-08:00

ALL IMAGES: GALLERMIC | THE ABSENTEE OWNER, 2010, COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS, 37 X 52CM, DIGITAL LAMBDA PRINTS.
For dear collector, contact Magic Room Gallery.

Untitled #5

Untitled #6

Untitled #7

Untitled #8

Untitled #9

Untitled #10

Untitled #11

Untitled #12

Untitled #13

Untitled #14

Untitled #15

Untitled #16

Untitled #17

Untitled #18
The Absentee Owner
Tonight I endep up staying over at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. My friend Soledad from Peru is staying here for a week, we are pretty good friends, but recently she only calls me when she has sentimental troubles with her boyfriend, it seems that they are going to break up again, but it’s the same story, the anecdotes make no difference in the end, like a roulette with just one color, let’s say red, casino red... What is it that makes her cling to him anyway? I can’t believe a human creature can get so attached to only one person... She leaves me alone after a couple of hours, and I can not help but thinking about my own owner… Oh just the way I feel right now, I can understand how a luxury prostitute could feel without a client, or even without a pimp -an owner-, available in the middle of the night, sad and humiliated by the coldness and the plastic pride of the paraphernalia of a five stars hotel. Alone to death, but at the same time decadently longing a mysterious encounter with a young and joyful bandit to finally smash her of pleasure… Shucks! I’d better go take a shower…

「空白地帯」
今夜は結局リッツ・カールトンに泊まることになった。ペルーの友だちのSoledadもここに一週間前からいる。仲はいいけれど、彼女は最近彼氏とうまくいってないときにだけ私を呼び出す。どうせまた別れそうに思えるのだけど、結局カジノで赤一色のルーレットをしているようなもの。どうしてずっと彼に執着するのだろう。私は人間という生き物が、誰かひとりにだけ惹かれるなんてことが理解できない。彼女が私を置いて出て行って数時間経つ。私は自分のあるじのことを考えてしまう。あぁ、今の気分なら客のいない高級娼婦の気持ちもわかる。客引き、つまり主人さえもおらず、五つ星ホテルの寒さに恥ずかしくて耐えられない、手持ち無沙汰の真夜中。孤独でいながら、でも投げやりな気持ちで若い男との刺激的な出会いを求めながら……。あぁ!　シャワーを浴びた方がよさそうね。

The Absentee Owner

2010-01-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

Thanks for coming to Willa's release party. After an entire year of my absence in the public eye, I came up with this theme (The Absentee Owner) that deals with the absence of love, emptyness and -narcisistically- my own image -the owner of the parties. I met many new people, if something, I'm pretty sure we killed emptyness together!
I leave you with an interview about Willa plus the photos from the party.

●Willaの由来
///"Willa" What was it named after of?
全部天からの啓示だったんだよ、シックスフィートアンダー見てる間中ずっとね。
It all came together from heaven, like an epiphany, while watching Six Feet Under.

^{Among the guests were Mori Art Museum's general Shinya Takahashi. Art collectors Keita Arisawa, Mr. Edo, Johnnie Walker, Naoki Hayashi, Mitsuru Shimazu, Fujimori Shiki, Okunobe san and Satoshi Okada. APC's director Fabrice Hebert. Art writer Chie Sumiyoshi. Eventers Norio Ishiwata and Franck Stofer. Gallery Naruyama's Jason. Performer Lauren Levitt. Willa's muse Sono. Muses Nakao, Fuyuri and Aiko. Special thanks to Willa's co-hostess Vivienne Sato, to musician Allon Beausoleil for sitar psychedelic show, to selectors Rob Judges and Young Caravaggio and to curator Azusa Shintaku.}

●パーティーをはじめたきっかけ
/// Please tell us why you started a party.
みんなと同じだよ。ただ楽しみたいから、新しい友達つくったり、ナンパに明け暮れたりして、ただ単に楽しみたいから。誰も他に僕が開くようなパーティーをしてないしね。もしかしたら何人かの人は僕のコンセプトを理解できないかもしれないけど、見事な才能とスタイルを兼ね備えた人たちが集まるパーティーに行くことってすごいセクシーで楽しそうだと思わない? そんなトーキョーのホットな人たちを寄せ集めたいんだよね。なんにせよ、トーキョー人って僕にとってちょっと物足りないんだ。だってよく、みんなが僕に“君なしのトーキョーなんてつまらない”って言うけど、なんで誰も、この空っぽのトーキョーで戦おうとする人がいないんだろうってむしろ不思議に思うよ。「今となってはパーティーなんてそういう空虚さに対抗する療法でしかない」、だとか、「ああいうのは薄っぺらい」って言う人もいるけど、パーティーだって他のどんな社会的行動とも同じように強力な文化的要素を示してると思う。だからうわべだけなんてことは全くない。僕のパーティーに、来てみてよ、テーマは人間の条件について、すべてのパーティーから浅薄さを減らすために。トリッキーかつ、人工的なんだけど、その本質はアートだって僕は言える、自分の心の中に劇場があってさ、人生そのものじゃないけど、人生についてのその舞台でなら誰だって役者になれるからね。
Like everybody, just for the fun of it, to make new friends, to get hedonistic, to　“nanpa”. What happens is that nobody does the kind of parties I do. Maybe some people can not understand my concept, but don't you think it is more fun and sexier to come to a party where people is capable of using their brain and style? I want to gather all the hotties from Tokyo. However, I think Tokyoites are a bit too lazy people for me. Many guys told me, "Tokyo was boring without you". I wonder why nobody in Tokyo does anything to combat this emptyness. Well, now you can say parties are just one single form of therapy against void, and perhaps the most superficial, but as any social behaviour, I think it depicts a strong cultural factor. So it is not so superficial in the end. And come on, my party, with themes about human condition, is the less superficial of all parties. But it's tricky, it's artificial, I could say it is art in essence, a theatre in your mind, it's not life, it's about life and you become an actor.

●日本に来たきっかけ
/// What was the trigger of your coming to Japan?
ラブ。
Love.

●Sonoちゃんとの出会い
/// What did the encounter with Sono chan mean to you?
彼女はアートだと思ってたよ、しかも超高価な作品!
I thought she was an art object and very very expensive!

●物語の作り方ーコンセプトや情景はどこからやってくるの
///how do you construct the story? - what is source of the concepts or sceneries?
ほとんど小説やラブレターからかな。
Everything I do is pretty much a roman à clef and a love letter.

●好きなアーティスト
///Favorite artist.
たくさんあるよ。最近夢中になってるのは、マガリ・ソリエル、ファスビンダー、ルクレシア・マーテル、プッチーニ、JG バラード、チャブーカ・グランダ、ステファニー・シュナイダー、キャット・パワー、マリア・カラス、ナン・ゴールディン、ハンス・ベルメール、ジャ・ジャンクー、アンジェラ・ゲオルギュー、ダニエラ・デッシーと、ニコラ・プッサン。
So many. These days I devour Magaly Solier, Fassbinder, Lucrecia Martel, Puccini, J.G. Ballard, Chabuca Granda, Maria Callas, Stefanie Schneider, Cat Power, Nan Goldin, Hans Bellmer, Jia Zhangke, Angela Gheorghiu, Daniela Dessi and Nicolas Poussin.

●趣味は?ー特に大量の画像をパソコンに集めていることに関して。
///Do you have any habits? especially about the collection of a bunch of images you hold in your computer.
僕は熱狂的なアート好きだから、大量のイメージ画像をパソコンに保存すること自体が自分の心の中にアートを蓄積しているようなもんなんだよね。でも最近は、自分や、家に遊びにくる友達のために料理をすることが、最近の楽しみになってる。
I'm a passionate art lover, to save those images in my computer is just a metaphor of putting art inside of my heart. But I'm actually more excited about my new pleasures, like cooking for me and for anyone that comes inside of my house.

●今後どんなパーティーがしたい? Willaの行く末や4Fでのパーティーについて
///What kind of party do you want to hold in the future? fx, Willa's future. party on the 4th floor.
もしウィラが東京でうまくいったら、そのうち僕の好きな活動的なアーティストを招待したいな。
If Willa works in Tokyo, I would love to host the living artists I like.
Gallermic

PROMO:Willa Presents “The Absentee Owner” 1/16/2010
at Magic Room in Nadiff, the intellectual Ebisu spot
So where is the owner of your heart? Is he on a bussiness trip, or he is fighting in the war? Is he working abroad as a marginal
inmigrant to save money and get his family out of poverty, or is he studying a p.h.D in Harvard? Did he just left you for other, or maybe
he just doesn’t exist? Maybe you want to be the owner of yourself so that you will never get into the realm of emptiness again?
Or maybe you will find your owner here… Maybe it is me???
あなたの心のあるじはどこに消えたの?　出張へ?　それとも戦火の中へ?　
貧しい家族を養うため出稼ぎに?　もしくはハーヴァードで博士号を取得しに?　他の女のために出て行ったのか、彼はそもそも存在しなかったのか　
もう空虚な世界に立ち入らずに済むよう、あなたはあるじの存在を埋めようとしているの……?　あるじはもしかしたら自分自身かもしれないわね
Maybe no, but come to WILLA's RELEASE and let's see what happens..! And let's do some stuffs in 2010 from the very January!!!!

PROMO:WILLA presents “The Absentee Owner” ^{PARTY RELEASE}
At Magic Room in Nadiff, Ebisu
1/16 sat, 8pm - 5am
Featuring: intro to WILLA’s original imagery
Hosted by Galle & Vivienne Sato
Music: Allon Beausoleil (SITAR PSYCHEDELIA LIVESHOW 11pm), Rob Judges & Young Caravaggio
Manifesto 日本語OK!
CLIC
↓

Some images from the exhibiton "The Absentee Owner"
that will be on display at the gallery.
Photos by Gallermic.

See you next Willa!^{2/20 post valentine}

Willa's Vernissage

2010-01-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Thanks for coming to Willa's vernissage. I started taking photos a bit late and missed some sweet Tokyoites, but here you are some pix of people living for art...

^{Among the guests were art collector Johnnie Walker and Satoshi Okada, fashion editor Tiffany Godoy, Marc Jacobs maison's Martin Webb and Yoshiko Kris-Webb, Gallery Naruyama's Jason, musician Allon Beausoleil, performer Lauren Levitt and muses Sono and Aiko.}

Most likely I will be at Magic Room Gallery all this week. I will also play some of my favorite movies on the 4th floor's cinema, e.g. "La Teta Asustada" by Claudia Llosa, "Broken English" by Zoe Cassavetes, "Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant" by Fassbinder, "Unknown Pleasures" by Jia Zhangke and "La Mujer Sin Cabeza" by Lucrecia Martel.

See you this saturday at the party release!

Welcome to Willa + Art Objects to The Absentee Owner

2009-12-23T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hello. First of all, I would like to thank the lovely gestures of Japanese people since I got back to Tokyo, I was really not expecting anything. I especially want to thank Magic Room Gallery for giving me the chance to show my work and this new party. Why do I do art? It's a matter of health, happiness and self-awareness, the creative process serves me as a therapy against my desillusion with the real world, only creating my own universe is that I find relief and can stretch my wings.

Parties for me have always been a means to create my community of friends, people who shares a similar moral. I am not here to show-off my clothes, I am doing this so that we all can share a romanticist moment, it does not depend on me exclusively, if sometimes I can not help but feel the party was a failure, I wash my hands of this: it's not for me to expect ignorance, coldness and mere poses from the people who comes.

Why do I have the need to meet strangers, then? In general, I think I am a coquettish person, or with a bacchanalia tendency, I want to faire l'amour a mourir.

Welcome to Willa. Let's meet, let's converse, we might end up as real lovers or not, but it's beautiful to build something from love, non?

I leave you with some thirds' art objects that make me think about "The Absentee Owner", my thema and photos for the party release the next 16th of january, 2010!

Chabuca Granda's song “El Dueno Ausente”(1970's), which means The Absentee Owner in Spanish. It is about a domestic servant from the Andes in Peru, she works at Chabuca's house in the capital Lima, she came to Lima to look for her absentee owner that is fighting in the war. She can't find him. Chabuca thinks the maid is losing her beauty working so far away from her land, the beautiful peruvian Andes, and asks her to go back there to wait for her owner as soon as possible.

The film "Broken English" by Zoe Cassavetes, 2007. What does a regular single woman in her mid 30's feel like? Loneliness, desperation? At last she finds an owner who shows her that actually she should be self-possessed! The soundtrack is so recommended. I will play some tracks in Willa.

The aria "Sola, Perduta, Abbandonata" in the opera "Manon Lescaut" by Giacomo Puccini, 1893. Des Grieux has gone to look for water, leaving Manon "alone, lost, and abbandoned," as she sings that she does not want to die. Poster by Rafal Olbinski.

The films by Wong Kar Wai are a cornucopia of characters suffering of loveless and void. My favorite ones are "2046"'s Faye Wong from 2004(the pacient creature waiting for her japanese boyfriend, in her both roles, human and android, killed me!). And "Days Of Being Wild"'s Leslie Cheung from 1990 (in his case, his owner is his prostitute mother who abandoned him when baby).

The photography of Nan Goldin will always be an influence. Visually, I enjoy watching her muses' expressions of emptyness after having sex. Why...?

The film "L'homme Blessé" by Patrice Chereau, 1983. My favorite homosexual tragedy so far, a boy falls maddly inlove with a thief that kisses him fiercely in a public toilet. From then on, he can not live anymore without thinking in the weird criminal, 'til death do them appart...

This photography titled "Nude", London, 1956 by Bill Brandt.

Henrietta Rae's painting "Psyche Before The Throne Of Venus", 1894. Psyche can't bear her grief and implores to Venus the address of her lover, Venus' son, Amour aka Cupid.

Nicolas Poussin's "Echo and Narcissus", 1627/28. Somehow he looks devastated and empty in this depiction, but actually, he is perfect, he must be just tired of the chatterbox Echo. The putti, on the other hand, is an art object chilling out.

"Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant", 1972 (aka The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant) by Fassbinder. The twice-divorced diva Petra is tired of playing the tricks of love, she seems to be in her most lucid phase (her speech is messianic for me), until the muse Karin comes into her life, causing an emotional turn and a sad yet ambiguous ending in Petra, between the most obscure light and the most dazzling darkness. The lover's hardscrabble life...

The novel "Notturno Indiano" by Antonio Tabucchi, 1984. A journey in the search of a lost friend in surreal India is an excuse to represent the self-search of the narrator. But what if automatism, shadows,absence and emptyness is all he can discover in the chaotic India after all?

My favorite supermodel Snejana Onopka, with her little sad eyes, as though she already had knew, since before her birth, how empty life can be.. Photo by Steven Meisel.

Sarah Moon's Pirelli Calendar 1972. What can be more "realm of emptyness" than an entire year of beautiful prostitutes without clients?

This painting "Alenushka" by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1881. It discovered it in the cover of one my favorite books, Netochka Nezvanova by Fyodor Dostoievski.

"Ren xiao yao" by Jia Zhangke, 2002 (aka Unknown Pleasures). The story of Chinese teenagers on the verge of globalization, their daily life in the distopic province, with the sempiternal feeling of emptyness and no future, but the simple pleasures of singing pop songs and coupling. Adored it. I think this film is a subtle attack to their still unknown pleasures that's making them suffer: the arrival of the new capitalistic lifestyle in China, the consumerist society. Unconsciously, capitalism is on its way to posses their heart. And they will suffer for ever. (How many of us are owned by capitalism, by the way? Not me.).