Anyone who thinks the art of painting is dead should head for the Towa Building on Tokyo's Meiji-dori and take the lift to Galerie Le Deco on the fifth floor. It is here that German artist David Garde is showing work created since last September: objects, installations and paintings that disturb and provoke as much as they entertain.
We met in the gallery, where together with his artist wife, Haruna Sasaki, he was hanging work prior to the opening last Tuesday. But first, emerging from the elevator, I had to squeeze past a life-size statue of Buddha, hand upheld in blessing and -- by intimation -- welcome. "Did you really think it real?" he asked, delighted I had been taken in, albeit fleetingly.
"Only the face is metal, from Kamakura," he explained. "The rest is papier-mache, painted and gilded. Usually it stands in our Japanese room at home." Having brought the figure up to Tokyo thinking it might work in the context of the exhibition's theme, "Heaven Comes Down to the Earth," he had reached the conclusion it did not.