The meandering video and haunted music of perennial outsider Ken Ikeda, 35, make up the latest exhibition at SCAI The Bathhouse, that enduring home for Japanese avant-garde culture located out on the edge of the Yanaka cemetery in Tokyo's Taito Ward. "Behind the Scenes" seems a rather uncomplicated multimedia installation -- that is, until one takes a look behind the scenes and at Ikeda himself.
It was almost 10 years ago that the Tokyo contemporary art community got a glimpse of what some of us imagined might signal the start of an exciting new way of presenting emerging artists. Many had bemoaned the prices charged artists by the rental galleries in the world's most expensive metropolis, but Ikeda, a young, self-described "nonprofessional art producer," did something about it.
Borrowing the idea from New York critic Alan Jones, who used a variety of temporarily vacant spaces to mount short-term art exhibitions under his successful Invisible Gallery series, Ikeda set up the Floating Gallery.