Scrolling in the Olafur Eliasson results on liveauctioneers for farflung oddities I’d missed, I came across this unexpected familiar item right in front of me that I’d also missed.
Olafur began working with “quasi bricks,” a polyhedral tiling geometry whose four- and five-fold symmetry give it an uncanny combination of order and randomness, since 2002. He developed artworks and spaces from it as part of his long-running collaboration with mathematician/architect Einar Thorsteinn.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the intensely compressed, black-fired soil quasi bricks lining the walls of the Danish Pavilion at Venice in 2003. Or the luminous, platinum-glazed but equally intensely compressed stairway in Takeo Obayashi’s Yu-un Guesthouse, completed in 2006.
In that window, Eliasson also made some half-glazed Black Quasi Bricks, which were autonomously awesome enough to be issued as an edition of 30 bricks. Recognizing that they worked better together, though, someone bought four, which, when they were sent to Phillips in 2022, were photographed in the tidiest, most boring way possible. They sold anyway.
To the “Ueshima Museum Collection,” which, seemingly helpfully, includes “Acquired from Phillips, 2022” in their collection listing. What is the Ueshima Museum Collection? It is a private museum in Tokyo that opened five minutes ago to show everything its founder Kankuro Ueshima bought at Phillips in 2022.
Before opening the Ueshima Museum next to his old high school in Shibuya, Ueshima went back to his roots, where it all began, by exhibiting his collection at Phillips: “Kankuro Ueshima has curated an extraordinary collection of 600 artworks in just over a year since February 2022. This captivating collection features artworks by talented artists Ueshima personally encountered during his travels across Japan, Seoul, London, Paris, Venice, and Hong Kong. We invite you to join us at this exhibition and experience the essence of Ueshima’s unique artistic journey.”
And before that, he showed it at an art fair. In December 2022, after staging a booth for his collection of “over 500 works” at Art Collaboration Kyoto, Ueshima told Larry’s List that his collection focuses on “contemporaneity.” And when you consider Ueshima’s unique artistic journey was a speedrun of every art fair and day sale in six COVID-euphoric months, then yes, the Ueshima Museum Collection captures that perfectly.
When LL asked who inspires him most in the art world, Ueshima responded, his “art collecting mentor and guide, Takeo Obayashi.” In which case, Ueshima’s four glazed Olafur quasi bricks are a humble, even touching, homage to Obayashi’s 7,000-quasi brick installation. I hope Ueshima continues to learn from Obayashi’s example, not just his artist list. And as someone who’s been blasted by the same firehose of art, fairs, and auctions these days, can I suggest, maybe instead of a based private museum, just get a blog?
Black Quasi Bricks, 2003 [olafureliasson.net]
Ueshima Museum Collection [ueshima-collection]
And what do YOU do, Mr. Ando?