Satani Gallery: in Ginza 1982-2000

The gallery moves to Ginza 4-chome. The new space, formerly a bank vault, has exceptionally high ceilings for Ginza. News of the move inspires Yamada to try a new challenge of making large-scale works, and relocating proves to be an epochal event for the gallery, enabling Satani to hold an exhibition showcasing new artists in the space the following year. This attracts attention in the art world and leads Satani to continue the exhibition.

Six Christo exhibitions were presented at Satani Gallery. Beginning with the second one, Satani Gallery began to function like a primary gallery for Christo and Jean-Claude, who created the exhibitions in a dialogue with Satani. This relationship had its roots in Christo’s visit to the gallery to see his own solo show while he was staying in Tokyo in the spring of 1982. Masahiko Yanagi was a Christo fan who met Satani at the same exhibition while he was a university student. Not long after, Yanagi went to New York, won Christo and Jean-Claude’s trust, and became a key member of their team. After the Pont Neuf exhibition, the gallery made catalogues and posters for each subsequent exhibition, which dealt with works such as Wrapped Reichstag, The Umbrellas, and Christo’s early objects.

The show focuses on Takiguchi’s visual artworks and includes 166 works presented in cooperation with 60 people, such as Genpei Akasegawa, Tatsumi Hijikata, Arata Isozaki, Kunio Iwaya, Juro Kara, Makoto Ooka, Toru Takemitsu, Shuntaro Tanikawa, and Yoshiaki Tono.

Along with Shuzo Takiguchi, Satani considered Klee to be one of the most important artists. In this exhibition he showed 28 works by Klee including oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints that he had collected over a number of years, and made a catalogue, poster, postcards, and a calendar for the event. Satani put all of his energies into the exhibition, which attracted an endless stream of visitors and led all three printings of the catalogue (a total of 3,500 copies) to sell out.

For this 11th exhibition in the series, a regular event at the gallery, Satani received the full cooperation of Katsuhiro Yamaguchi in an effort to present the first comprehensive view of Jikken Kobo’s activities. The catalogue produced for the show remains a major reference work on the group.

The exhibition presented works from the Isaku Yanaihara Collection with the cooperation of Eiji Usami, who was a close friend of Yanaihara’s and was also friendly with Giacometti.