Tokyo Station Gallery is showing a pick 'n' mix exhibition, "12 Rooms 12 Artists," comprising a variety of modern and contemporary art acquisitions from the UBS art collection. There is no explicit curatorial imperative to connect or compare the works, so you're free to enjoy the visual confections in your own way.
The pieces are all two-dimensional, with the exception of a figurative bronze "Odalisque" by Anthony Caro. Given that these are from a corporate collection, only one work in the show may cause a banker to have a Damascene moment and quit to start a boutique sourdough bakery, and that would be Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-Jen's 2003 piece "Factory". This montage of archive 1960s black-and-white propaganda shows the life of factory workers in Taiwan's textile industry, and contemporary video of women who worked for over 20 years in the Lien Fu garment factory, now derelict, before being made redundant in 1996 without any severance pay or pensions.
"Factory" is declamatory about its engagement with social and political issues. Other artists in the show are more ambivalent, their concerns dealt with more subtly, or they grapple with issues of a more personal sort.
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