KOSAKU KANECHIKA is pleased to participate in Art Fair Tokyo 2023 from March 10 to March 12, 2023 with works by Yutaka Aoki, Junko Oki, Takuro Kuwata, Ataru Sato, Noritaka Tatehana, and Dan McCarthy. In this year’s presentation, the gallery continues the collaboration it began last year with SNORK – Modern and Contemporary, a vintage furniture store that specializes in Finnish Modernist design that will be exhibiting designs by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto alongside artworks by the six contemporary artists.

First presented at an exhibition in Helsinki in 1932, Alvar Aalto’s furniture went on to be shown and sold at the exhibition “Wood Only” held at Fortnum & Mason in London the following year. With the landmark exhibition being very well received and Aalto’s furniture becoming extremely popular in England, Aalto founded ARTEK with fellow contemporaries in 1935. He built a manufacturing plant in 1965, establishing a production line that was almost identical to current production.

SNORK – Modern and Contemporary handles Aalto products from before 1965 as original vintage products, many of which are also highly acclaimed as part of the design archive.

Inspired by the studio of Donald Judd, who had a keen interest in architecture and design, and was also an avid collector of Aalto’s furniture, the presentation is designed to create a space where long admired furniture pieces by Aalto meet works by the gallery’s artists who are pursuing novel forms of artistic expression. Judd is known to have considered the use of space to be just as important as the work itself. Guided by the ideas of Judd, innovation in composition is a key component of this collaborative booth.