The Best Booths at Tokyo Gendai, From Gawk-Worthy Tea Bowls to Hand-Embroidered Packages

No sooner had Tokyo Gendai thrown open the doors to the VIP preview of its second edition on Thursday than ARTnews Top 200 Collector Takeo Obayashi could be seen admiring a striking Robert Longo drawing of a tiger at the booth of Pace Gallery, and collecting couple Shunji and Asako Oketa were wandering through the booth of Blum. They weren’t the only machers on hand. Also making the rounds were the likes of Yoshiko Mori, chairperson of the Mori Art Museum; Jenny Wang, head of the Fosun Foundation; Simian Wang, founder of the Simian Foundation; and many others. The fair, in other words, opened on a high note. The extent to which that will translate into sales is best measured in ARTnews’s report tomorrow, as the fair continues through Sunday. In the meantime, here is a roundup of some particularly compelling booths.