A work in progress, the hotel is slowly transforming each room into a piece of art. The Park Hotel Tokyo, in December 2012, started the “Artist in Hotel” project where an artist is invited to paint and decorate an entire guestroom. If all goes to plan, by the end of 2016, all the guestrooms on the 31st floor will be complete.
The artist-in-residency program provides the opportunity for an artist to translate their inspirations and point of view onto the walls. Running as part of its effort to offer unique and creative services, the hotel supports the Creative Tokyo initiative, which aims to share Japanese culture across the globe.
Here we take a look at three rooms in the hotel that are part of the initiative, and bring to light the unique point of view of each artist.
Bamboo Room
The “Bamboo” room was painted by Japanese artist Yoshitaka Nishikawa who took around three months to complete the room. The room is covered in fresh green bamboo trees that makes you feel immediately at ease when you walk in.
“I wanted people who were tired of the bustle of city life to be able to really relax in this room,” explains artist Yoshitaka Nishikawa. “The relationship between Japanese people and bamboo goes back a long way, and bamboo is loved by people all over Japan as something very dear to them. Bamboo is flexible, yet strong. It’s slender, and stretches up straight towards the sky, a symbol of spirituality characteristic of the Japanese people. I painted this imagining a refreshing breeze blowing through the room.”
When standing at the corner of the window or when lying down on the bed the room shifts, offering different features of the painting and new perspectives. The artist changed his materials and colours depending on the position in the room, and coordinated the whole space while keeping it simple.
Lucky Cat
The artist Hyōgo Mino began the Lucky Cat room in October 2015 where he continued the work for one month while he stayed in the hotel, and completed it in November 2015.
Based on a poem about cats written by Japanese famous author Soseki Natsume, the artist has painted his words across the ceiling of the room, while big and bright cats playfully dance across the walls.
Hyōgo Mino shares, “The lucky cat (manekineko) is said to be a cat which brings good fortune. But what attracts me is the cat’s pose itself. Here, I painted cats like unidentified manekineko clustered together on the wall around the bed, with their whiskers and eyebrows shaved off, like a bedside screen”.
“And when night falls, I hope you feel something special about the colours of the curtains and the bedcloth, and the cats reflected in the window,” says Hyōgo Mino. Watch a short video of his work here.
The 47 Vegetables
The artist Mayako Nakamura completed The 47 Vegetables room within one month. When walking in the room focus is drawn to the white walls, which were primed five times before being coated in white. Taking inspiration from the forms of Nabeshima ware, which is globally famous for its rarity and degree of quality, the walls were then decorated with the motif of forty-seven plants from Japan.
“I treated the room as a white porcelain vessel,” expalins artist Mayako Nakamura. “Suppose this room is a porcelain bowl. A Nabeshima porcelain bowl with 47 vegetables of Japanese origin. The wall painting surrounds you like an emaki scroll: from verandah, kitchen, highland, stream, marshland, pond, hill, fields and to the court yard. I hope people staying in this room will treat it like a part of their own home, as though taking a stroll in the garden.”
The resulting design is light and you can clearly see the delicate and refined details in the final outcome. Watch a short video of her work here.
Currently there are two artists in residence at Park Hotel Tokyo; Hidetaka Furukawa, who is painting both old and modern landscapes of Edo-Tokyo, and Kazuki Mizuguchi who is painting an extremely detailed work of Tokyo Imperial Place. We can’t wait to see the finished results!
To find out more about Park Hotel Tokyo’s artist residency program, or to book a night’s stay in the hotel visit –
Park Hotel Tokyo
parkhoteltokyo.com
