French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin furthers his international reach and connection to the Asian art scene with an upcoming new space in Tokyo. Perrotin Tokyo will be located on the ground floor of the Piramide building, which was built in the 1990s. Architect André Fu and his design studio AFSO were the brains behind the gallery’s modernist space at Roppongi.

Following his long-standing original gallery space in Paris, Perrotin has since spread with hubs in Hong Kong (opened in 2012), Seoul (opened in 2016, in front of the Blue House/President’s residence and the Gyeongbok Palace), and New York (opened in 2013, having recently moved from an uptown address to a downtown one).

Perrotin’s roster of artists includes Maurizio Cattelan, Takashi Murakami, Sophie Calle, KAWS, Ryan McGinley, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Aya Takano, Tatiana Trouvé, Xavier Veilhan, and Xu Zhen, amongst others.

The opening exhibition is dedicated to 97-year-old Pierre Soulages’s recent abstract paintings, articulated in resin rather than oils, which were presented previously in New York. Soulages has a special relationship with Japan, where his work was exhibited and valorized very early in his career. In 1951, his paintings were exhibited at the May Salon at Takashimaya, and years later at the Tokyo International Biennial. In 1969, the Tokyo MOMAT exhibited an ensemble of his canvases, before his major retrospective at the Seibu Museum of Art in Tokyo, which traveled to Korea, China and Taiwan. More recently, Soulages’s oeuvre has been presented in several collective shows in Japan, including at the Suntory Museum of Art in 2017.

In the months leading up to the inauguration, Perrotin Tokyo’s facade currently features the work of French artist JR, notably the project he created by for the Louvre in 2016. He made the famous pyramid ‘disappear’ in plain sight, in an illusion that covered the entire I.M. Pei structure.

The dynamic Roppongi neighborhood has other neighboring art spaces; the Piramide building alone hosts London Gallery, Ota Fine Arts, Wako Works Of Art, YKG / Yutaka Kikutake Gallery and Zen Foto Gallery. In the area, the museums and galleries include the Mori Art Museum, the Suntory Museum of Art, the National Art Center, Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Taka Ishii Gallery Photography / Film, Take Ninagawa, amongst others.

Perrotin Tokyo will be at the Piramide Building, 1F, 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku, 106-0032 Tokyo