I was in New York last weekend for a concert, but it was also Asia Week while we were in town–an annual Asian art fair that always features a couple big auctions, great shows at galleries and museums, etc. I’ve always wanted to go, so even though we were busy with the concert and eating great food (more on that in a minute), I snuck in a visit to Ippodo Gallery on the Upper East side. It’s a satellite; their main gallery is in San Francisco. But their small permanent collection is off the hook, as the kids say these days, a top-tier selection of contemporary Japanese ceramics, lacquer, and bamboo pieces.
The exhibition side of the gallery featured a jaw-dropping set of lacquerware by Terumasa Ikeda, who uses traditional materials–primarily urushi lacquer refined from poison oak sap (!), gold dust, and abalone shell (see pic above)–to create intensely modern containers whose pitchy surfaces sport iridescent arrays of tessellated geometric forms and Matrix-like numeric sequences. My crummy cell-phone pics really don’t do these pieces justice, so make sure to visit the Ippodo Gallery link above and check out the exhibition.
OK, food: I always keep a running list of places I want to try marked on my Google Map of NYC, and we got through quite a few this time, some great and some meh. The great ones were Lysée bakery and Ichiran ramen; Taiyaki NYC was also worth the stop. And as always, the pizza in the airport was better than anything I can get in my town.
The Rookery 