A stream flows deep.

Lateness is better than never as I descend down wriggling a branding smile--past two Astro boys and Harings into a maze of human currents somehow wishing I had come earlier as asked. The designer wear and brand appendages that had been quite vigilant at street level are all but gone. The temperature says unwrap so I do. This is The 8th International Contemporary Art Festival 2001, or NICAF, for short, and I mention 'late' because this is the second last day. Like 'Rocky' I've made it--all I got to do now is get with the flow.

Taka Ishii is working hard wearing the coolest footwear and think of asking where he got them as I peruse which I did not know at the time were to be some of smartest morsels of the event--works by Araki, Noato Kawahara, and Naoya Hatakeyama. Not too many minutes pass and I feel I have made eye to eye contact with too many works by Yoshitomo Nara, and think, isn’t it too much? Though, with the corrupted smiles of half manga hybrid child grownups, something continues to stir which helps me wear a similar paralyzed grin thinking there is a point to you can over expose. Zeit-foto sports a hairless elongated-legged photo portrait of a young naked girl by Ryoko Suzuki, which looks to stand a few meters high. Someone asks about the truth of the photograph and gets a kind reply of waste up it’s real, waist down it’s not.

Nearby I run into Chai-ok and her bride, care of Seoul gallery Dado Art. She looks busy--it looks fine. Gallery Koyanagi pairs the international with the domestic, Thomas Ruff and Rika Noguchi--while the images speak absence Koyanagi looks to be doing business of sorts. Kenji Taka has a mix of things on display and decided on a larger booth than most. I catch Taka musing over, or maybe smelling Herbert Hammak’s freestanding vertical painting. I move over and do the same.

Elsewhere, at Osaka's Yoshiaki Inoue's booth, 'new type boys and girls' stretch to sailor moon proportions courtesy of Hiroto Kitagawa, and are at first catchy, yet after a few moments they become less! There is little point in being too harsh, I know this is not to be confused with the reality of the Tokyo scene, missing are the countless edges and corners of visitors and artists working together or filtering through tiny you-pay-you-haul non-commercial and semi-commercial galleries, which make up the true vibrancy of a still under graded Tokyo scene.

An exception is a modest booth housing quirky displays of small works organized by Curation team AIT, a non-profit organization headed by Yuko Ozawa and Roger McDonald. McDonald had an assisting position in the Big Wave, 2001 Yokohama Trienniale and has an interesting voice. Both, though, had a strong hand in forming a sense of belonging promoting themselves in a bunch of forums held over three of the days. Lanky McDonald can be seen darting around in a constant state of half cloaking, uncloaking--brushing a grin as he arwkwards by. The focus of AIT, MAD, (making art different), an independant education program within AIT, and a forum he moderated ‘Towards Different Futures For Contemporary Art Education’ rings something like navigating the alternative as curative style. He has quirky doctorate ideas and it may or may not spell the right formula especially as an add on to NICAF.
Here it is hard to make sense of their presence. After all this is a homely commercial affair. Perhaps it is an attempt to stir up interest and vitality very much needed to the event, or just a thin course of meat to the menu.

Yuka Ohtani's green and red minimal primitives catch a lot of attention at Gallery Kashara's booth.
Tomio Koyama's spot springs a constant state of laugher amidst friendly smiles, filled with what looks to be NHK arts program educated housewives filing in front of small prints of international stars such as Nara and Murakami. Koyama is smiling--all is well, it seems.

NICAF is billed as the most important Asian international art show--alas there was little international to it except a handful of galleries out of Seoul, and regular Tokyo galleries displaying their international artist's stock.

Art U of Osaka chose to present artists from different parts of Asia, and I thought was a good move and am invited to lay down in Pinaree Sanpitak's {noon-norm}, organza and synthetic fiber pinks to blacks 'vege-morphs' what I identify, right or wrong, as garlic pillows.

A side show on the same site, different location, has a showing of another media, a "[Video Art Screening: Tokyo] your memorabilia"; perhaps as another authenticator, and deserves different attention.

As for this Sunday, here, as I am looking, the function of this fair is more a vague 'art education'-- an attempt at widening an art gallery visiting community via communication and contact, and has for the better or worse, worked out as a painting come sprinkle of sculpture and photography display.

The 8th Nippon International Contemporary Art Festival ran from 4/4 ~ 4/7, 2003. For a full list of the 2003 participating galleries and artists see NICAF's Homepage