The Asakusa Gallery is housed, literally, in a former family residence built in 1965 and renovated in 2015. The energy the gallery commands derives from its combination of unique surroundings, an unexpected use of space, and a powerful concept of art. The gallery is "just" a small remodeled house down an alley a few minutes' walk from the Tawaramachi subway stop in a funky, "low-city" (shitamachi) Tokyo neighborhood adjoining Asakusa. With only two rooms to make its conceptual point, it manages to create an innovative space to rethink what art can be, what it is supposed to do, and how it can be experienced.

The entrance to the gallery is a standard residential genkan that leads into a compact office area and welcoming room. One can imagine visitors and delivery people stopping there to chat for a few minutes, and all gallery-goers must, of course, remove their shoes. After that they can take in the first floor space, which does not take long, and then climb a narrow stairway to the upstairs exhibition room.

The walk from the local shopping street down the cozy lane past small temples to the back-alley house and then up the stairs is a miniature journey to a tranquil, friendly space where art, and art-goers, can feel at home. Visitors can relax here and reconsider art far from the environment and expectations of commercial galleries and large museums.

The current exhibition, The Right to Opacity, which runs until 13 October, presents the work of Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, video artists from Berlin. It is based on writings by Jean Genet and delivered as a video piece filmed in Berlin with transgender performers. The voices and silence of the two actors -- one miming and one speaking out -- have a dramatic and colorful impact. The lighting, sound system, and images, all taken in while kneeling, sitting, or standing in socks on the floor, make the art come alive through proximity, intimacy, and the somewhat disorienting contrast with its surroundings.

Curator and co-director Koichiro Osaka, who also runs the contemporary art gallery SCAI The Bathhouse, said that his job is "to give more points of entry, but no answer to the questions that art can pose." That broadness of conception is evident in the Asakusa Gallery's current and past shows. The current one transcends boundaries of gender, voice, power, and artistic control. The video uses smoke, space, distance, and dress to establish "a space to contemplate issues," and to consider them from multiple points of view.

This is a space that is clearly less about commercial or material concerns and more about presenting possibilities and raising questions. The gallery moves away from the traditional idea of selling art objects to collectors and towards a way of investing in ideas. The questions posed by the space, and the art exhibited inside, are broad, multiple, and perhaps unanswerable. That way of viewing art, in a small, intimate environment without any questions pre-answered, is unique and fresh.

The next exhibition planned before the end of the year, starting sometime around the end of November, features famed performance artist/cook/peregrinator Rirkrit Tiravanija together with Yoko Ono -- two artists who, like those in the current show, focus less on art as object and more on art as human experience. (The exact dates for this show will be on the website soon.) The gallery has many more collaborative projects in store connecting diverse conceptual approaches. It is a thought-provoking stop on any visit to the more tourist-oriented yet still welcoming neighborhood of Asakusa next door.