Georgina Adam Gives a Glimpse of Takashi Murakami’s Gesai Art Fair

Adam’s column in the Financial Times leads with Murakami’s fair:

Murakami created and funds Geisai, now in its sixth year, and which
is quite unlike any other art fair in the world. For a start, all
comers are accepted, on a first-come, first-served basis; the 1,178
artists at this year’s event paid as little as £100 for a pitch in the
exhibition hall. “There’s nowhere else I can see budding artists like
this, and there’s an amazing diversity on offer, and fantastic energy
here,” said one of the judges, Marc-Olivier Wahler, head of the Palais
de Tokyo, Paris’s contemporary art centre.

The point of the fair
is not so much selling (although a lot of works were sold) as to
talent-spot, which is why it attracts figures such as Wahler.  [ . . . ] Murakami says the event loses money, but he is a canny businessman and
Geisai enables him to winkle out newcomers for his Kaikai Kiki studio.
Three of his artists, Mahomi Kunikata, Rei Sato and Akane Koide, were
unearthed at the rough-and-tumble of previous Geisais. This year’s top
prizewinner, Kyoko Nakamura, may well be a name to watch.

The art market: Talent Spotting in Tokyo (Financial Times)