One Piece Club Exhibition
There is a group called “One Piece.” It is a gathering of art lovers who resolve to buy at least one work of art per year — a community of people who share that mission. Every year they hold a collectors’ exhibition, showing the works they’ve gathered over the past twelve months. Being Vol. 11, this is presumably their eleventh outing. It was such an enjoyable show that I’d like to introduce it here.
The venue is 3331 Arts Chiyoda, a spacious and comfortable gallery.
The Works
Each work carried a standardized caption, which made checking the details as you looked around genuinely fun. The captions listed artist name, work title, place of purchase, and reason for purchase — with the striking presence of a red “sold” sticker to indicate that a work had already been snapped up.
I was surprised to see works I had just missed out on myself lined up here. Takeshi Tanaka’s work — isn’t it great? I did wish, though, that the captions had also included year of creation and medium.
Liu Zhihong’s work was lovely.
Oh — a work I bought too! I spotted a piece by Keizuka. This collector had bought two of her works.
Framing
The aspect of this show I most looked forward to was “framing.”
How do collectors frame the works they’ve bought? I looked around from a collector’s point of view.
Surprisingly, quite a few works were shown unframed, which stood out to me. Whether the collectors just aren’t that interested, or whether the works are stored rather than hung at home, I don’t know — but as someone in the framing camp, I believe that “enjoying the framing” is one of the true pleasures of collecting.
Let me introduce a few frames I found particularly striking or full of good ideas.
*Note: In some cases the gallery or artist themselves may have chosen the framing, but the captions did not clarify this.
In the work below, a white-wood box frame is paired with a shimmering gold mat paper — an auspicious material — and it matches the piece perfectly.
The next work also uses a beautifully textured mat paper — combined with a wooden frame that echoes the tones of the work itself, the framing is really elegant.
Yuto Yamada’s framing is superb — a perfect match with the work.
The frame that looked most expensive of all was on Mari Katayama’s work. It’s a stylish frame. The gold gives a sharp accent to a piece dominated by whites.
The one I found a bit disappointing was the next piece. A wood-grain box frame doesn’t quite sit right with a work built around pastel pinks. I found myself wondering, “What would I do…” — probably a safe transparent acrylic box. Clear acrylic boxes were dotted around the venue too.
There were also some three-dimensional works worth learning from. Keizuka’s work is fastened directly through the back with metal fittings. There’s no acrylic protection — a boldly stripped-back display method.
Having the chance to show off your own collection in such a spacious exhibition space is something to envy.
There were more works than at other recent collector shows I’ve been to, and above all, it was a show that made presentation fun.
